Little Kindnesses

Mel was having a cup of coffee at his favorite little spot one day when something would take place that he would never forget.

He was sitting at the bar area, people-watching as he often did, when an older man and his granddaughter walked in. The two were a study in contrasts, she a young waif so full of life and potential, he a stunted creature whose life was almost used up. His cane was barely audible over the general clamor, but Mel still heard the harsh chock chock chock as he walked across the tiled floor. The sight of him made Mel chuckle, though every step seemed to threaten to spill him to the floor. He held her hand in his wrinkly one and the girl beamed up at him with genuine love.

They were standing in line for a booth, the coffee shop was very busy, the girl gabled happily to herself as the old man leaned on his stick, taking it all in as if just happy to still be able to take in anything. Mel felt that his interest was becoming voyeuristic, but he just couldn’t look away from the pair. They were so different from the usual people who filtered into the shop, and it appeared he wasn’t alone. Two women had come in, and one of them had noticed the pair as well. Mel spent some time observing them as well, hoping to see the same interest or happiness that he had felt, but what he saw was very different.

The girl appeared to be filled with a mixture of trepidation, fear, and resolve that Mel had never seen before. Mel had felt like a voyeur, but the young woman was like a hawk whose seen a rabbit. She didn’t look away, seemed unself-conscious of her attention, and had eyes only for the little girl and her grandfather. The other said something to her, grabbing her arm fretfully, but she pulled away as she said something quick and harsh to her.

As they waited, the little girl suddenly noticed the pair and told the girl how pretty she looked.

The girl's attention was broken suddenly and she looked down at the little girl in surprise. She bent down on a knee, and Mel could see her point to the little girl's shirt and say something that made her giggle. Then she pointed to the old man, her lips asking if that was her Grandpa and the girl giggled as she answered that this was her papa as she clung to the man's hand. He turned to give the girls a slight nod and a smile before turning back to the barista as she arrived to seat them.

The two girls watched them go before seeming to decide to come to the bar where Mel was sitting instead of waiting for a booth too.

As they took a seat beside him, the one who had watched so intently was still staring at the pair. As the old man smiled happily at the young girl and the doll she was dancing across the table, the girl's face kept that same look of resolve. She clearly had something to do, something that she was loath to do but had to nonetheless. It was clear that it had something to do with the old man and his daughter.

“They're quite the pair, aren't they?” Mel asked, making her jump as she blushed shyly, having been caught looking.

“You have no idea,” she said, her accent strange and exotic.

Mel thought she might be from the Middle East or maybe Northern Europe.

The barista came around about that time and took her order and Mel couldn’t help but notice the resemblance. The two girls were quite dark complected, their hair long and black as it spilled down their backs, and as the one with the intense stare leaned in to whisper to the waitress, Mel saw the new girl look over at the pair sitting at the table. She nodded and brought the two girls coffees as she went to bustle in the kitchen.

“Do you know them?” Mel, becoming very curious as the exchange went on.

“Unfortunately, I do.” the girl told him, sipping her coffee.

The longer he looked at the girl, the more Mel suspected that she was foreign. This was Sweden, of course, and foreigners were not uncommon, but she also looked foreign in that way that people out of time look. The girl, as he thought of her, was likely in her mid-twenties, but her eyes led him to believe that she had lived more in those twenty years than Mel had in his thirty-seven. She had lived through terrible times, seen atrocities, and had come out on the other side.

He noticed movement from the table where the little girl sat with her father, and she squealed a little as a mountain of whipped cream and sprinkles was delivered atop some kind of chocolate confection. To the father went a far more sensible coffee and a scone, and Mel thought the old man might have made out better. The shop's scones were to die for, and less likely to put him into diabetic shock.

“You probably just made that little girl's day,” Mel said off-handedly, guessing the woman had sent the order there.

The woman sighed, “I hope so. I would like to give her some joy on what may be the worst day of her life.”

Mel looked at her questioningly, but the woman had eyes only for the old man as he sipped and then added sugar to the coffee.

“I met him in two thousand seven when I was twelve years old and I have spent the last seventeen years tracking him down. He has been my sole obsession, my reason for living, and every time I thought I might simply lie down and die, his face pushes me on.”

She stiffened a little as he looked down at the scone, but his granddaughter did something to steal his attention then and he looked away.

“Must be a hell of a story,” Mel commented.

“Would you like to hear it?” she asked, still not looking away from the old man, “It appears that we have some time.”

Mel wanted to decline, but instead simply nodded as he invited her to continue.

“It all started when the Russian Army invaded our lands.”

When she started talking, there was no way he could make her stop.

Once she got started, there was no way he would want her to.

When I was little, we lived on a farm far from here.

Our town was small, little more than a farming community, but we were happy. My family kept goats, sheep, chickens, cows, and horses. We made a living selling milk and eggs, wool and cheese, and our family was large. I had nine siblings, five boys and four girls, and we helped my mother and father with the daily chores and the running of the farm.

So, when the Russian Army pushed a little further, we became afraid.

We could see the smoke, we could hear the gunfire sometimes, and the Army was nowhere to be seen. The townspeople raised a militia, but it was no match for the might of the Red Army. They shot our young soldiers, our hunters, and ranchers, and marched into the town over the backs of the broken. We could see them from our farm, Father had not joined them, and we knew that the bad times would soon be upon us.

She paused, watching as the man took the scone in his hand before setting it down again.

She sighed, saying something in a language I didn’t know, before continuing.

We were all brought into the town the next day, some of us by force, and taken to the meeting hall in town so we could meet our new overseer. The mayor had stood with the men of the militia and been killed, and the man who stood on the stage was as different from the mayor as night was to day. The mayor was a big bear of a man, but he was kind to his friends and neighbors. This man, slight and wearing a military uniform, looked more like Father Christmas. He was an older man, his face a smiling mask that he showed us with great excitement.

His eyes, however, reflected none of the smile on his face.

He told us that his name was Major Krischer and that he would treat us as well as we treated him.

That turned out to be a lie.

For the first few weeks, all proceeded as normal. The soldiers and the Overseer toured the town, took in the farms, saw the market, and met the people. The man was courteous, but his sharp eyes missed nothing. The people thought that maybe the occupation would not be so bad. Perhaps he would be a kind overseer and when he moved on the town would still be as it always had been.

They could not have known how short a time that peace would be.

It began with simple theft.

The soldiers came to the farms and demanded that we give them a portion of our crops. Not much, they said, only an amount that came to around twenty-five percent of our total crop. Now, the mayor had always requested a third, so Father was excited that they wanted less. The mayor had already taken his share, however, and Father told the soldiers this. Taking more would cut into the food we had for winter, but the soldiers said they didn’t care. “You will give us what we ask for, or it will be taken,” they said, and thus we gave it to them.

My brothers, none of whom had gone to fight, became angry at this, but Father told them it would be okay.

“It is not winter yet, and we will grow a little more before it comes.”

Next came the conscriptions.

They told every male over the age of sixteen in the village that they would be conscripted into the red army. They would be trained, they would be paid, and they would be able to send money back to their families. Three of my brothers were of this age, and they were taken for training, despite their protests. My father continued to say that this was okay, that they would send money back, and that our lives might be better. Father had forbidden any of his children to join the militia, but it seemed the war would take his children nonetheless.

My older brothers left on a truck that day, and we never received money or letters or saw them ever again.

Mel began to worry about the direction of the story. He was expecting a heartwarming tale about someone helping a town in a time of strife. He had hoped that maybe the girl was repaying a kindness to the old man, but the longer the story went on, the less and less he thought it was so. Taking another look at the little girl who was dancing her doll around the sugary confection, Mel thought she looked different from the older man who sat across from her. Her hair was darker, her feature less harsh, but she was young and he was very old.

With so many of the men gone, next came the brutality. The soldiers didn’t need to tax anymore. They came and took what they wanted. Our cows, our chickens, our goats, our crops, and even a few of my sisters were taken in by soldiers and came back with bruises and tear-streaked faces. I was young, but I saw the looks they gave me as well. My father kept me home, not wanting me to go to the village, but when the food prices rose and our trade began to dwindle, Father found it hard to feed his remaining children. It was only myself, my younger sister Hetz, my older sisters, Grettle and Farra, and my older brother, Phillip. Mother and Father tried their best, but when the Overseer came to our farm one day, Father knew he couldn’t hide me any longer.

He came to the house, introduced himself as if we didn't already know who he was, and sat at my parent's table to discuss the reason for his visit. He insisted I be there, a girl barely thirteen, and I remember hating the way he looked at me. He said he had seen me in the market and wanted me to come to stay with him in his villa, saying he could give me a better life and offer me opportunities I wouldn't receive here. Father knew why he wanted me, we all did, but to my surprise, he agreed. He shook the man's hand and promised to send me to him the very next day.

“Let us get her ready and we will bring her to your villa tomorrow,” he said and the Overseer was happy with this.

He left and Father got to work. He knew what it would mean if he defied this man, he had seen the stockades in the square, but he didn’t care. They had taken his oldest sons, his livelihood, and he would be damned if he would let them take his daughter too. Father loaded me into a grain wagon and had my siblings take me out of town.

As we left, I peeked from the back and realized I could be seeing my home for the last time.

I found it hard to be quiet as we went, and my crying must have attracted attention. Some soldiers stopped us and threatened to search the wagon. Farra was the oldest, Father had tasked her with keeping us safe, and when she offered to go off with the soldiers if they would let us pass, we knew we would never see her again. My brother Phillip took the reins and we left Farra behind.

I never saw my parents again.

I never saw my brothers again.

We kept moving until we came to a town where some cousins lived. They helped us and gave us shelter, but I never forgot that man or what he did to our village. We learned later that he took all he could from the land and left it a ruin. He hung my father and my mother and took Farra as his wife. He left us orphans, destitute, and I have never stopped thinking about that man. When I heard that he fled here to escape justice after being declared a war criminal, I knew our time for revenge had come.

Mel had been so focused on the story that he didn’t look back at the man until he started gagging. His hands were on his throat, his face puffing as he hacked, and the little girl was now asking him if he was okay with real fear in her voice. People were trying to help him, but in all the fuss only Mel saw the other girl, the one who’d come in with the storyteller, go to the girl and lead her away.

The little girl looked back only a single time, calling him Pappa before the two left.

Mel heard her get up, but before she left, the woman gave him a final detail.

“The little girl is my niece, Farra’s child by this man who is old enough to be her grandfather. Farra died before he went into hiding, but when we heard that he had fled with a little girl, we knew what we had to do. I remembered one other thing when I was planning this. When he came to the house to ask my father to send me, he told my mother three things as she offered him tea and cakes. The first was that he took his coffee black, the second that he could not abide dairy, and the third was that he had a strong allergy to nuts.”

She smiled, dipping into a bow as the barista who had served the two told her it was time to go.

“When you tell people how we killed one of Russia's monsters, tell them I killed him not with a gun, not with a sword, but with a scone that hid a handful of walnuts.”