Once the decision had been made, it was as if all arguments fell away, and the room felt lighter.
“And meantime,” Karl added, “let’s be sure to make this place a shambles, as if no one has been here in years.”
He began tearing out the drawers of the desk he’d warned Chaim not to touch, though somehow he managed to do it with little noise.
In horror, Chaim threw his arms across his face to shield himself from any possible explosions.
Karl laughed uproariously. It was the only explosion that boomed across the room. Then he turned and spoke directly to Chaim.
“Little brother,” Karl said, in a quieter voice, “I checked these drawers the first night we arrived. Before anyone came in. We weren’t going to sleep in a room of bombs on my watch. So, no booby traps here. But there could have been. You needed to learn that caution.” He finished destroying the drawers.
However, the destruction of the desk was all for nothing. No food, no maps. Chaim realized that those drawers had been emptied days, weeks, months, maybe even years ago.
Worse, he could no longer remember the line of the poem that had just been in his head. He shrugged, thinking. Anyway, what does it matter? What does any of it matter? Poetry the least of all.
* * *
• • •
They catnapped through the day, with only two of the partisans keeping watch from outside the house, hunkered down below the bank of a stream. They were hidden enough not to be seen, close enough so they could pick off anyone scouting for them.
When dusk arrived at last, it was as dreary and threatening as Karl had promised.
They moved out of the house in groups of two, each of the children in the keeping of one of the adults.
Karl’s last act of destruction was to pull the door half off, and then he shut it as best he could.
“Why shut it again?” Bruno asked in a whisper.
Karl grinned at him, acknowledging that was a good question. “It would be a sign that this happened recently—the unweathered wood on the inside of the door, the metal unrusted, exposed to view. This way there’s no knowing how long ago the place was abandoned or searched.”
Chaim nodded. He would never have thought of that on his own. It’s like a chess game, he thought. The partisans always need to be one or two moves ahead.
* * *
• • •
They scuttled quickly to the stream bed, Karl staying behind, with Bruno in tow, to whisk away their footprints.
Rose kept Gittel close by her side. Gittel seemed pleased to be allowed to carry Rose’s extra rifle, though not the Mosin-Nagant, which—now that they were on the move—Rose never let out of her own hands.
After them, Sophie walked next to Big Johanny. They barely glanced at each other.
Finally Chaim trailed behind Oskar, following carefully in the older man’s tracks.
The other four partisans had already broken off from the group and headed off to scout.
The sky promised a rain that never quite fell, though the air seemed heavy with water. That didn’t matter, because dark came soon. The partisans and the children remained silent shadows as they walked north and west toward the border, which—Karl assured them with a wave of his hand—was out there somewhere.
* * *
• • •
It was a long trek that night, and after staying for several days and nights in the same place, the children, at least, had become lazy, or so Klara declared. She was now walking with them, Bruno reluctantly at her side, because Karl was taking his turn with the scouts.
“Like slugs,” Klara added, as if calling them lazy hadn’t been enough.
Bruno had begun to protest when her hand went up sharply for silence—he knew enough to hold his tongue. She turned her right ear toward the far side of the river, listening.
They all stood like statues. Even the trees moved more in the slight wind than they did.
Chaim strained to detect what it was Klara had heard. And finally he had it, a shuffling of feet in the grass, ahead of them but across the water.
Klara signaled for everyone to drop down on their bellies onto the damp riverbank. The cold made Chaim shiver. He lay in sudden terror of what might be heading toward them.
Gittel grabbed his hand and squeezed it so hard that his fingers went numb.
And then something ran through the water noisily and pushed past them, a brown blur that swerved, ran on.
“Deer,” Oskar whispered from nearby, and stood up. A loud exclamation of air surprised him, and he made a single cry. Then he began to fall like an old tree.
Chaim heard the cry. Only after did he hear the shot. He couldn’t move. It was as though he was paralyzed, and for a moment, he wondered if he’d been shot, too.
But Gittel—acting as if she’d been trained for it—rolled onto her side and chambered the single bullet Rose had allowed her into the rifle.
Turning awkwardly, Chaim saw Gittel as a kind of shadow self, because the clouds at that same moment had opened a terrible eye in the sky. The moon, round and glowing, poured its traitor light down on them.
A battle began. Bullets scythed across the river, both ways. Only no one seemed to know who their targets were—Germans, Poles, Soviets.
“Stay down!” Rose growled.
Chaim put his hands over his ears and shoved his face into the dirt to keep from crying out, while his sister shot at something very far away, as if she’d been given more than the one bullet. The trigger clicked and clicked again and again.
The partisans continued firing for long moments more, emptying their guns.
Chaim didn’t lift his head up, not even to see if anyone on his side was still standing. He couldn’t remember the words to the Shema or any other prayer. Couldn’t remember the names of the partisans. For one horrible moment, he couldn’t even remember his sister’s name. The sound of the guns filled the space between the banks of the stream, running like blood along its sides.
And then suddenly there was a profound silence surrounding them as deep as the peace of the grave.
The only thing he knew then was that he, at least, was alive. Nothing hurt. Nothing ached except his fingers because he’d clenched his hands tightly during the entire gun battle. But even though the shooting had ended, he was still too afraid to lift his head to see if anyone else had survived.
He lay there for so long, he thought that surely dawn would expose them. But at last he sensed—or maybe heard—movement by his side.
Not deaf, then, though he figured it best to play dead.
Gittel whispered to him, “We have to move. Move now.” She stood.
“NO!” he screamed, but it was too late. She was already on her feet.
And so was everybody else, except Oskar, who was wounded badly but not dead. Not yet, anyway, though a bullet had gone through his eye and out behind his ear. Even wounded, he made no sound, not even a groan.
Only one of us hurt. How can that be? Chaim remembered the sound of many bullets, and yet everyone else seemed to be safe. There was Oskar, of course, who now looked like some troll from the forest, his ruined face startled as much from the wound as the fact that he was still alive.
“Up, up, up!” Rose called out roughly, and Klara echoed her. “That will have awakened the neighborhood.”
Rose added, “Johanny—make sure we’ve gotten them all.”
Karl and the other scouts came hurrying back then from across the river, chagrined that they’d missed finding the Germans. Karl especially tried to apologize and held out a German helmet, but Klara was having none of it.
“Five of them out hunting deer, and you scouts missed them all,” she hissed at them. “I should shoot you where you stand. But we haven’t time for argument. We must hurry away from here. God knows how many other Germans are around. Unless that was a
rogue group. You could probably hear that gun battle for miles.”
They took time to retrieve the bodies of the five German scouts and toss them into the stream. Only the children were spared that chore.
The sound the bodies made as they hit the water was—Chaim was sure—the sound of eternity.
* * *
• • •
So the little troop hurried away, staying in the shallows to mask the sound of their passage. Karl was the last to leave, collecting all the rifles and pistols and knives from the dead Nazis as a kind of penance. He caught up with them fifteen minutes later.
He gave the largest knife to Klara and the other two to Rose and Big Johanny. Then he turned to help Oskar, who had become terribly slow due to his awful wound, slower even then Bruno.
Bruno was left in Klara’s care.
It was hard to decide who was complaining the most between Bruno and Klara, but even they kept moving on, until they’d all put several miles between themselves and the dead soldiers in the stream.
“That deer saved us,” Rose told them later. “The Germans were so busy taking potshots at the stag and dreaming of venison, and he made so much noise running from them, they missed hearing us entirely.”
Not entirely, Chaim thought, shivering at the memory of poor Oskar’s wound.
Gittel Remembers
I’ve been told that killing someone is remarkably easy with a rifle. You line up a target that looks so small, it could be a toy. You press the trigger, careful not to jerk, because that will spoil your aim.
A piece of metal tears along the barrel and leaps into the air and continues until it finds resisting flesh, which slows it for a bit. Sometimes for good. Or for bad.
But killing someone close up takes a different mind-set. The top predators—lions, tigers—are born with the desire to kill. They enjoy what they do. They toy with their food, play with it. Perhaps that’s what has been given to them instead of a conscience.
Humans have been endowed by God with the will to resist killing. And most of us do. However, being given the ability to kill from afar has changed all that. Maybe it just becomes easier as it goes on.
I felt a power surging through me, almost a kind of joy when I shot that time in the forest. I had no idea if I killed anyone or not. But the joy remained. Which is why I threw the rifle away, into the weeds, when the firefight was finished.
Rose slapped me when she found out what I’d done. “Guns don’t grow on trees, you know.”
Karl gave her one of the rifles from the dead Germans, and a Luger as well, and she never slapped me again. She never talked to me again, either.
21
They trekked through the first part of the night, along the edge of the forest, deep enough to be hidden by trees but not so far in that they would have had difficulty walking. Not so far in that they would have had to carry Oskar. Amazingly, he was still upright, though needing help.
Chaim felt more tired than he’d ever been before. He wondered if days of rest were to blame, and that his body now had to be retrained. As if he were a knife that had lost its edge, with no ability to be re-honed.
He remained silent, of course, but checked on Gittel and Sophie constantly, nodding at them and smiling as if he knew no exhaustion. Sophie nodded back each time. But after the first smile, Gittel stopped responding, her eyes now on the path ahead. She seemed exalted that they were once again on the move, even swinging her arms as she walked along. That she didn’t look at him again was the oddest thing of all. Unprecedented. Even when they didn’t speak, they signed. Even when they didn’t sign, they checked in with a look. And now this . . . It worried Chaim, but he didn’t know how to talk to her about it.
Meanwhile, Bruno was again attached to Karl like a shadow, though he was clearly having trouble keeping up with the big man’s strides. Karl never slowed down to accommodate Bruno. Holding up the stumbling Oskar didn’t stop him from moving swiftly.
The wounded man’s head had been bandaged with white strips of someone’s blouse, the blood lending it a pink tinge.
Chaim thought Oskar looked like a painting of a dead man, yet he still managed to walk.
As he watched the three of them, several lines of poetry snaked through Chaim’s head:
There is a stutter in each step.
Time fills the wounds.
Blood is the only thing
that moves without effort.
He didn’t know if the lines worked together or were each the start of something else. He didn’t know if they were in the right order. He was simply too tired to care.
* * *
• • •
Three hours after the gunfight, Oskar began to cough loudly and could not seem to stop. Then the coughs turned into spasmodic moans that were loud enough—or so Chaim thought—to summon an army. He swiveled around, desperately hoping someone else might look worried. But none of the partisans had stopped.
A few yards on, Oskar began to groan loudly. Karl threw his arms around him and signaled the others to move away. They quickly left the sounds of the wounded man behind. The sudden quiet behind them seemed more ominous than Oskar’s awful groans.
In minutes, Karl had caught up with them, but Oskar was no longer with him.
Chaim wondered where Karl had left Oskar. Behind a tree to be collected later? In a cave? And then he got it. Nothing could have saved Oskar except, perhaps, a hospital, and meanwhile his loud shuddering, moaning presence endangered them all.
He’s killed Oskar, Chaim thought, and wondered only briefly why he was not disgusted but relieved.
Karl must have done it quickly, mercifully, with that large knife from the German soldiers, done it to save the rest of them. And also to save Oskar from an even crueler death had he been found by Nazis seeking information.
It had been the right thing to do, yet without willing it, Chaim stepped away from the big man, shuddering a little.
“Done?” Big Johanny asked in a hoarse whisper.
Karl grunted. “Left him against a tree. Made it look as if the Germans did it.”
Gittel came over to Chaim, drawn there by their unspoken bond. She saw his face was ashen. “Are you all right?”
He nodded. But he didn’t think he was all right. Didn’t think anything was all right. The world, he thought, has been entirely turned upside down.
“Karl . . .” he began.
She already knew what he knew and whispered, “It’s war.”
“But—”
“Of all of us, Oskar would have understood. What Karl did was a mitzvah. A good deed.”
He knew she was only saying what was true. He wondered why it didn’t make him feel less terrible. Talking with her had always made things better. But not this time. Maybe, he thought miserably. Maybe she will never make me feel better again.
The entire group walked more somberly than before, quieter, trudging along without a sound.
Even Bruno stopped looking up to Karl, keeping closer to Klara, who seemed not to notice him at all.
By now, night had begun to lighten. The edges of the forest became more defined, as if the rising sun stitched the trees together with a golden thread. Chaim’s mood lifted with the sun.
Klara spoke, so quietly, Chaim almost missed it. He was never to know if she was actually talking to him or to herself.
“The border,” she said, pointing to a line of trees that seemed to blend into the foot of a hill. “Over that next hill.”
It looked to be about fifteen miles away. His heart lifted. Mama, Papa, he thought, now we’ll be safe at last. It had been one or two, maybe three months since they’d been put in the barrels—an eternity.
He turned to look at Gittel, but she was staring at the hill. Maybe she’d heard Klara as well. He suddenly recalled a line from one of the fairy tales Papa used to read them. A Russian
tale. He could remember the book, with its bright colors. “The morning is wiser than the evening.”
But he knew that the morning was also much more dangerous than the evening. He guessed they wouldn’t make the run for the border during the day but would wait until evening came around again. To be honest, he would actually be grateful for the rest. They could sleep here in the forest, dreaming in safety, then in the evening, they’d be fresh for their final dash.
The border, he thought, won’t be running away. It was a line of a poem he would write. Not one he would forget. He allowed himself a little smile.
* * *
• • •
Without discussing it, the partisans moved even deeper into the woods, back into the dusk the tall trees provided. There, the green canopy gave them the shade they needed to remain invisible.
Big Johanny, who had taken point, stopped and raised an arm, and they all quit walking. When his arm dropped to his side, they sat down, stretched out. There was a compost of old leaves under the trees that would make a soft bed.
Then Johanny pointed to himself and Rose, making his fingers walk, the signal that the two of them would head out to check for any German soldiers.
They swiftly faded into the trees.
Klara passed around a handful of nuts to each person.
Chaim ate his share greedily, gulping his three sips of the water from the canteen. Then he lay back on the soft leaves. Too soft, he thought. Too scratchy. He was asleep before he had time to think about where they were.
He woke hours later, disoriented, having to pee. He was careful not to groan as he stood up and was even more careful not to step on any of the other sleepers.
He knew enough to go deeper into the forest for that business and was just about to open the fly of his pants when he heard a sound nearby. He dropped silently to his knees, wetting himself in the process.