A man in green and black camouflage three trees over was moving quickly and like a ghost toward the sleeping partisans.
Chaim stood and was about to cry out a warning when he saw a second and a third man, both bent over and heading as quickly toward the partisans.
He didn’t know what to do or how many they were, but he was still ready to scream something, to get the others up and ready, when a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder and a voice whispered harshly in broken Polish but with a German accent, “Say word, and you’re tot, dead.” He felt a knifepoint at the back of his neck.
Suddenly he understood—even if he were brave enough to try, his throat would be cut before he could make a sound.
He stood there under the brutal hand, his pants dripping wet, shamed and trembling, unable to either speak or weep.
* * *
• • •
The battle—if that was what it could be called—was over in seconds, though Chaim was too far from the sleepers to see it.
The crouching men—there were fifteen of them, sixteen if Chaim counted the man holding the knife to his neck—were all in heavy camouflage. The partisans had been outmanned; the slaughter had been so quick and quiet, he knew it had been done with knives and bayonets. He guessed the partisan guards would have been the first dispatched. After that, the sleepers would have been easy targets.
He tried to imagine what had happened and then didn’t want to know. He thought of Gittel, of Sophie, of Thorny Rose. Of Karl the Wanderer. Even Klara. He tamped down the rising panic that threatened to spill out of his mouth like vomit.
Why, he thought over and over and over again, why have I been spared? There’s nothing special about me. He was too horrified and too scared to say it aloud.
Besides, who could he ask with only five feeble words at his command? The men with the knives dripping blood? The one behind him with a knife still dry?
No one to ask.
No one to comfort him either.
He whispered Gittel’s name. But not so loud the man behind him could hear.
Then he looked down at his shoes, at his wet trousers, at the cushion of leaves, at the heavy hobnail boots of the man behind him.
At that moment, sorrow and shame overwhelmed him and—though he wasn’t sure he really meant it—he asked God to let him die, too.
He heard a whisper of leaves, and someone came toward him. Closed his eyes as if the prayed-for executioner had arrived. Waited to be dispatched like the rest. Lambs, he thought, to the slaughter.
Someone spoke.
“Chaim?” He didn’t look up, but he was pretty certain it was Sophie’s voice.
Perhaps, he thought, my throat has already been cut and we are now all on our way together to be with God. He decided that might be all right, then. God would forgive him for not calling out.
“He’s alive,” someone else said. “At least that’s something.” He recognized Bruno’s voice.
And now, he thought, nothing makes sense.
“Silence!” the man behind him ordered. “Or I will slit his throat.”
Neither Sophie nor Bruno said a word more.
But someone else came and put arms around him, and when he looked up, it was Gittel. There was blood at her mouth where someone had probably hit her. He felt his knees give way, and only because she held him up did he manage to stay standing.
He whispered her name in her ear as if she didn’t know it, as if he couldn’t believe it. She nodded. Only when they were led past the carnage did he realize that every one of the partisans was dead, and apparently with hardly any resistance.
The man behind him spat to one side loudly and said in his broken Polish, “They are bad people and worse fighters. We will take you to the camp.”
But the partisans hadn’t seemed bad at all. Just distant. Sometimes annoying. Secretive. Except for Karl, who’d always treated him well, Chaim knew nothing more about them other than their names. Karl at least laughed a lot. And they’d kept us safe . . . well, up until now. Chaim didn’t want to think about Karl’s laugh. Or Rose’s thorny nature. Or . . . or . . . any of them.
He dared a look at the dead and saw Karl, his mouth open, already a receptacle for flies.
But what if this man, whoever he is, is right? Chaim thought. What if the partisans had been bad people, planning to sell us—for money or for guns? What if this is the true rescue mission, not a kidnapping, not a battle?
He looked over at Gittel, who was almost imperceptibly shaking her head, pulling on her braid. As if she guessed what he was thinking. That twin thing again. But then she shook her head once more. The little finger on her right hand crooked. Their sign for a lie.
He wondered, What does she know that I don’t? His mind was awhirl. And why weren’t we killed? The only thing he could think of that distinguished them from the others were their school clothes. And their lack of weapons.
He focused on what he knew. These men speak German to one another but broken Polish to us. He recognized some of the words from the Nazis in Łódź.
But at the same time, he guessed any look of resistance on his part would be seen as a threat. And until he could figure it out, until he could talk to Gittel and Sophie and even Bruno, it was safer to pretend to believe them.
* * *
• • •
The men—soldiers, possibly—had taken all the guns and knives from the partisans, and their knapsacks as well. They let the children keep their own sacks and the clothes, except for the warm sweaters, which they parceled out to those who had children at home. At least that’s what Sophie told Gittel they said.
When they took the knives and whetstones out of the packs and—laughing—put them in their own belts, Chaim felt his cheeks burn. He thought about Papa, who’d worked so hard to get those knives, who had so carefully taught them how to use the whetstones. Knives they never really got to use. Only then did he want to protest. But of course he said nothing.
The big find for the soldiers was Mrs. Norenberg’s jewels, but Gittel held Sophie’s hand tightly so she wouldn’t say anything out loud. Luckily, Bruno, for once, held his tongue.
“Juden!” spat one soldier.
Chaim knew that meant “Jews.” And knew then absolutely that they were prisoners, not rescued from the partisans.
In Polish the same soldier who had spat said, “All your money, and look at you now.” He repeated his witticism in German for his companions.
The other soldiers laughed and turned away.
Chaim looked at their backs and ran a finger across his throat as if to say, I will kill you for that. But of course he knew that was only a fantasy. After all, the soldiers had all the knives anyway. And the power. And look at them. Still pigs. Trayf. The dregs of the earth.
* * *
• • •
Yet the soldiers had promised a camp, and to Chaim that sounded like paradise, given what they’d endured so far. It seemed so to Gittel and Sophie—even Bruno—because they nodded and followed the men almost without complaint, though Gittel turned once to Chaim and pulled her right forefinger with her left thumb and forefinger, straight up. Not just trouble. The sign for real danger.
The man who’d threatened Chaim with the knife held up a hand. He pointed away from the rising sun. West.
“Schnell!” The order for a quick march.
“Schweigen!” One of the soldiers put a fat finger to his lips. Silence!
* * *
• • •
Silence was already Chaim’s mode, so he needed no reminding. Not like Bruno, whose mutterings won him many a cuff around the head and shoulders that first day with the soldiers. They were heading west. Away from the border, back toward the very place they’d come from.
Chaim didn’t have to be pushed forward like Sophie, who seemed to stumble more than she walked. Didn’t have
to be growled at like Gittel, who kept stepping sideways rather than forward, as if she hoped to find a way to escape. Or at least a way to slow everybody down.
Chaim figured he would sort it all through once they got to the camp, however far they had to go to get there.
A camp, he mused, will probably have food. Maybe a real bed. And maybe Mama and Papa will already be there. He held on to this small, crazy hope while at the same time wondering if he was merely being unrealistic, delusional. Perhaps in war they were all the same.
As they turned away from the rising sun, Chaim whispered to Gittel, “Morning is wiser than evening.”
She turned inquisitively and stared at him for a moment. Just like the old Gittel again. Then she whispered back, “I remember—Baba Yaga.”
He smiled. The great Russian witch. She liked to cook little boys for breakfast, but loved feisty girls and kept them safe. If he could keep Gittel safe, he would gladly be breakfast for a witch.
Bruno was suddenly at his side, whispering, “Maybe there will be hot food and baths. And maybe Mama and Papa will be there. And maybe we will have clean clothes.”
Just what Chaim had been thinking, but hearing it in Bruno’s mouth made him doubt it all. He remembered something Mama used to say: Three maybes do not make a summer.
At that, all of Chaim’s held-in anger and fear was suddenly released and he rounded on Bruno, growling, “You think camp means games?” He wished he could add, “And Karl Vanderer’s mouth was filled with honey, not flies.” But the words would not pass through the gates of his teeth.
He barely felt the hard cuff on his head or the soldier’s harsh warning, “Schweigen!” Barely heard Bruno cry out from the slap he also received.
Chaim knew now what was real and what was not. Whatever this camp was, it would surely mean danger to them all.
As they walked west, the sun warmed his back, and he felt the beginning of a poetic line rise up into his head like a prayer. It had to do with falling leaves, the red of blood, the gold of . . . of a false payment. But none of it was real. He understood that now. So he let the line go.
Let all poetry go.
He would ditch the journal pages as soon as he had the chance.
Part III
Sobanek Camp
Ovens
The old witch’s ovens never stop smoking;
that delectable house reeks of roast pork,
not a kosher smell, but tempting.
Along the property lines, a minyan of bones
dances the hora whenever another piece of meat
comes into sight, a warning never heeded.
There’s only one word for what she does to them.
Speak it and you become a collaborator.
Just a shudder will do, and a curse,
even as your eyes turn red,
even as sooty spit pools
along with the candy
in your slackening mouth.
—Chaim Abromowitz
Gittel Remembers
Time is a flexible membrane, stretching across memory, making things longer than they were—shorter, too. Why can’t I remember each day? Because they were mostly indistinguishable. They bled into one another. Because we were silent most of the time, and without proper speech, there’s no proper memory. Because constant fear refuses to let reflection or other strong emotions in. All of that and none of that. We make a story out of memory, and being factual is often not a part of the whole.
We fled Łódź in the late spring and found ourselves in Sobanek in an autumn that came way too early. None of us could remember summer at all. We arrived at the camp under gray skies, and all too soon there was a first frost, a fairy tale world gone mad.
What we whispered there, in the shadow of the barracks, the days shortening only with each new death, told us little of time’s passage because everything seemed to remain the same. We had hard beds, little food, were made to work all day in the camp factory. We might as well have remained in Łódź. At least there we would have been with Mama and Papa. Until we got on the wedding train.
And yet, being in the camp after being on the run in the forest felt oddly secure. As if the work truly did make us free, as the sign in the factory room said.
Certainly we were safer there than in Łódź, where children died on the streets of starvation, where people were sent off on trains and never returned. Safer than in the forest where bored men shooting at deer were themselves shot, left as spoiled meat polluting a stream. Where sleeping friends were sliced in two.
Probably there was as little safety in Sobanek as in the rest of the world. But for a while we felt relieved. When there was thin potato soup in a cracked mug, when there was an old carrot that could be cut into four slices, when there was an actual slatted bed off the floor—we gave thanks.
Dayenu. It would have been enough.
Even though the bed had no mattress and had to be shared, the carrot was mostly rotten, the soup so thin a newspaper could be read through it. A newspaper we didn’t have, or else it would have gone unread into the bottom of our shoes to keep out the cold.
Dayenu.
Compared to what we’d already endured, it felt safe. Predictable. We understood the rules, harsh as they were.
Safe, that is, until the day the doctor arrived, his face wreathed in smiles, his hands full of candy.
That was when we learned what safety truly was.
And what it was not.
22
It probably isn’t so far as a crow flies, Chaim thought when they finally got within sight of the camp. But walking had taken them ten full days. And even though there’d been a bit of hot food—and fires to sleep next to—the four of them were enormously tired. The soldiers didn’t look tired at all.
Oh, Papa, oh Mama, Chaim thought, maybe a real bed at last? I hope you have somewhere to lay your heads.
It was their tenth evening since being captured.
“Liberated,” Bruno had insisted on calling it, against all reason, and entirely forgetting his recent hero-worship of Karl.
Seduced, Chaim thought, by soup. He supposed he could have been, too, but for his caution.
“Ten uneventful days,” Chaim whispered under his breath so that only Gittel could hear. What he meant by uneventful was that their stomachs were no longer stretched as tight as a toy drum, and no one had died within their sight.
He whispered and could hardly hear himself, and still she shushed him.
In fact, he’d kept his small store of words tucked firmly under his tongue for those ten days. Even when pressed by one of the soldiers to talk, cajoling him in broken Polish. Even then.
The soldiers themselves talked. Endlessly. According to Sophie, who understood German—though they spoke in a dialect slightly different from the one she knew—the men talked about hot showers, local women, actual beds. About the lack of fresh fruit, the trashed cities, how late their pay was in coming. How no mail seemed to be getting through from their wives and girlfriends.
Sophie reported that when they talked about politics, all they complained about were the Jews. She was careful, though, not to let on that she could understand them.
Unlike his sister, Bruno chattered away with the soldiers as if they were old friends, and he was soon using some of their own dialect words. In return, they gave him extra food and told him stories.
Lucky he doesn’t have any real information to give them, Chaim thought, and signed some of that to Gittel, who shared it with Sophie when Bruno was listening to tales the soldiers told by the fire.
“Doesn’t mean he won’t make such information up,” Sophie said bitterly, and Gittel comforted her by patting her hand.
* * *
• • •
The soldiers themselves made much more noise than the partisans and seemed unworrie
d about being followed during the long days of walking. It was as if they knew this was friendly territory. But they still set guards each night and sent scouts forward during the day. Caution—it seemed—was a rule nobody dared to break.
They never introduced themselves, as if their very presence was all that was necessary.
And perhaps it is, Chaim thought. Still, he managed to catch a few names when they greeted one another after scouting—the big man who seemed to run things was Mockler. The one who cooked the soup, a smaller man with a wandering left eye, Klaus. A pair of scouts who appeared to be brothers, or at least cousins, because they looked quite alike and spent most of their time together, were called Akady and Amadeusz. But whether those were their first names, last names, or nicknames, Chaim never found out. The others were a mystery. Even Sophie could gather little else about them.
And Bruno was no help at all.
* * *
• • •
As the group came down a small hillside on the final evening, into what had obviously once been a meadow, Mockler held up a hand and sent Akady and Amadeusz ahead to check on things.
Knowing this was a linchpin moment, when lives swung in the balance, Chaim muttered the Shema under his breath, relieved he could remember it now. It was odd that he could speak more than five words without stuttering when it was a prayer, or reciting a poem. He’d never quite understood why, when speaking was ordinarily such a disaster.
He heard Gittel reciting the same prayer but had no idea if Sophie and Bruno even knew it.
Ahead, at the bottom of the hill, squatted a brooding presence, a hulk of low buildings, astonishingly quiet in the gathering dusk. All Chaim could see of the place were blocky shadows, which didn’t inspire confidence.
In fact, he thought, it gives me the shivers.
“Sobanek,” one of the men beside him said, pointing unnecessarily at the camp. Unnecessary because there was nothing else that could possibly carry a name in that darkening bowl.