Day After Night (26 page)

Finally, she could not sit for another moment and started gathering the last of the
cups. Backing out through the door into the kitchen, she was struck by the faces in
the room. From where Shayndel was standing, all of the girls were lovely; Zorah as
well as Leonie. Even Francek looked handsome. Her mother used to say that every bride
was beautiful, and Shayndel had offered up chinless Luba Finkelstein as proof that
she was wrong. But Mama said no, even Luba was a pretty bride. Tonight she understood.

Nathan followed her into the kitchen and got right down to business. “A few minutes
after one o’clock, we’ll send someone to your barrack,” he said. “Then it’s up to
you. Each of your lieutenants should take charge of five girls: get them up, dressed,
and ready to leave as quickly as possible. No one is to carry anything. No baggage,
nothing. We have to move fast. Our guys will be in the camp by then and they will
guide you out.

“One more thing,” he said, opening a cabinet under the sink. He handed her an old
pillowcase, lumpy and bound with a great deal of twine.

“You’ll find a bottle of chloroform and cloth to use as a gag—enough for the two women.”

Shayndel was furious. “You’re just telling me now?” she protested. “My girls are going
to be frightened enough without this going on,” she warned him as sternly as she could,
to hide her happiness at having Esther’s fate in her hands.

“This is not a discussion,” Nathan snapped. “The action begins in a few hours and
you have your orders. There’s a
wristwatch in the bundle, too, so you can keep track of the time. Take care of our
little problem after midnight. The most important thing is to keep everybody quiet
and get them out fast.

“I’ll see you later, Shayndel,” he said, and kissed her hand before she had a chance
to stop him. “Be strong.”

As the men lined up for the roll call, Shayndel noticed that there were no jokes or
games. Nathan’s captains stepped up smartly and everyone else fell in behind them.

“Finally learning your p’s and q’s, eh?” smirked Wilson. After they were dismissed,
however, the men took a very long time getting back to their barracks, stopping to
chat or tie their shoes, and pretending not to hear the guards shouting at them to
move along. The girls joined in, making a show of their independence, strolling oh-so-slowly
on their way to bed.

Shayndel found Leonie and took her arm. “Tonight there is going to be a breakout from
the camp,” she said quietly.

“Tonight?” Leonie gasped. “You are leaving?”

Shayndel drew closer. “Everyone is leaving.”

Leonie stopped. “Everyone? Surely not that German?”

“No, not her,” said Shayndel, and explained how they would quiet and bind her.

“And what about me?” Leonie said, thinking about Lotte’s threat to reveal her past.

“Of course you,” said Shayndel. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve taken people over much worse
terrain than this, and in the winter. The Palmach knows the countryside.”

Shayndel continued, “Your job is to help me get the other
girls in the barrack ready to go. Tedi and Zorah will be helping as well.”

“I will try not to disappoint you.”

“Disappoint? You underestimate yourself, Leonie. You are calm. You have courage. In
a country like this, you cannot be so meek. You have to stand up for yourself.” Shayndel
stopped herself, but Leonie heard her words for what they were: parting advice.

When they reached the barrack, Shayndel brought Tedi and Zorah to her cot and told
them the plan.

“I knew something was up,” Tedi said, her eyes bright. “This is wonderful. Another
week in this place and I would have been barking at the moon. What do you want from
us? What do we do?”

“There will be a knock just after one o’clock. We must get everyone up, dressed, and
ready to go as quickly as possible. They are to carry nothing. Quiet, light, and quick,
that’s our job. The Palmach will lead us out. I suppose they’ll cut the fences, and
then take us … I don’t know where.”

The door opened and Lotte fell into the barrack, pushed by two of the British guards,
their faces flushed and angry. “Next time, we won’t be so gentle,” said one.

Lotte spit at them as they left, screaming, “Ass-lickers, idiots, weaklings.” She
wheeled around. “You are ass-lickers, too, all of you,” she yelled.

After she got in her cot and pulled the blanket over her head, Zorah leaned over to
Shayndel and asked, “Is everyone going?”

“All but that one,” said Shayndel. “I have rope and chloroform for her.”

“And Esther?”

Shayndel shrugged. “People make too many assumptions
about how much Hebrew I really understand. But the truth is, I don’t want you mad
at me.”

Zorah smiled. “No, you don’t.”

As the time for lights-out approached, a kind of storm rolled through the barrack,
with flashes of temper and tension breaking like thunder. Two girls got into a loud
and stupid argument about a piece of fruit. Someone dropped a book and everyone jumped.
Jacob started running up and down between the beds, like a wild kitten.

“Can’t you control that little beast?” someone asked.

“Control your mouth or I’ll fix it for you.” Zorah glowered.

A loud knock startled everyone into silence. “Is everyone decent?” A moment later,
Goldberg’s head appeared in the door. “Everyone is present and accounted for, yes?
Well then, sweet dreams, my little ones.”

The lights went out, and the darkness bristled with a nervous thrum of throat clearing,
coughing, nose blowing, pillow thumping, blanket smoothing, and sighing. It was an
hour before the restlessness settled into the tidal whisper of steady breathing and
light snoring, though not everyone slept.

Tedi lay facedown, her nose buried in the pillow as she tried to block the smell of
Lotte beside her. Her arms hung over the sides of her cot, her hands pressed flat
against the cool concrete floor. Her head buzzed with questions: Where will we be
sleeping tomorrow night? What will happen if we’re caught? She was proud that Shayndel
had chosen her, but nervous. Would she have to fight? Was her Hebrew good enough?

This was bound to be very different from her escape from
the train: to begin with, it wasn’t freezing outside and she wasn’t starving. She
was not afraid, either. She had faith in Shayndel’s good sense, in Goldberg’s kindness,
in the passion of the Palmachniks, in the land itself.

She turned onto her cheek and as she closed her eyes, Tedi saw a letter sitting in
a tray on top of the cluttered desk. The window beside it was open to the sound of
lapping from the canal and voices from outside, amplified as they traveled over the
water. Mr. Loederman examined the address and smiled to know that she was alive and
well.

Tedi woke with a start, confused and angry. Why should her thoughts go to her father’s
business partner? Why should such a trivial detail from her past rear up just as the
future was about to begin?

She clenched every muscle in her body, straining to erase the image of Loederman’s
craggy face, the mahogany sideboard, the brass letter opener, the leather pencil case.
But it was all too vivid to wish or will away. Her memory was no more under her control
than her sense of smell. She was connected to the past by love and grief, and that’s
how it would be until she died. I suppose I will have to learn to live with this,
she thought. I wonder how long it will be before it stops hurting.

Zorah was keeping watch. After the lights were out, Esther had gotten down on her
knees, her head bent over hands pressed together like a steeple. It was, thought Zorah,
the most non-Jewish posture on earth. Esther appeared to be saying a rosary or asking
for help from the Virgin Mary. Of course, she could just as well have been praying
to Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel or
soundlessly reciting part of the Hebrew service, which she had taken to attending
with Jacob, morning and evening, every day.

Zorah considered herself an authority on the futility of prayer. In the concentration
camp, she had watched people beg for their lives or for an extra ounce of bread, as
if God were a wizard or a rich uncle. She had known better from the time she was twelve
years old.

As a little girl, she used to show off to the ladies in the synagogue balcony. They
smiled and nodded their praise as she demonstrated her mastery of the prayer book,
phrase by phrase, gesture by gesture, better than any bar mitzvah boy. That stopped
after she had overheard them whispering about her; too bad that she was plain as a
carp, with a father who didn’t have two coins to rub together, not to mention the
burden of that slow-witted brother. Too bad, they smirked, that piety made such a
poor dowry.

After that, her letter-perfect performance of the liturgy was nothing more than a
way to prove—to herself, since no one else seemed to care—that she was smarter than
the stupid hens who went to shul only to gossip and brag about their sons. Let those
who pitied her face and her fortune go to hell; she was determined that her life would
never be as small as theirs.

And yet, as Zorah watched Esther pray to some imaginary uncle on high, she silently
added an “amen.” She had seen the broken and the doomed find consolation in their
devotions, and a kind of peace. She knew that God had nothing to do with it. God was
a pretext, or a metaphor, or a strategy. But sometimes that was enough.

Zorah found it easier to forgive Esther her naiveté than her own long habit of arrogance.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, raising a clenched fist over her heart. “For the sins
that I have
sinned against you,” she repented, once, twice, three times. “For conceit, for pride,
for haughty condescension. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Leonie stared up at the ceiling and thought about escape, a beautiful word, especially
in French,
échapper,
which seems to whisper, “shhhh.”

Her last escape had not been beautiful. Accidental and unplanned, she had been alone,
half-conscious, and impossibly lucky.

After the brutal night with Lucas and his comrades and the early morning hallucination
of an angel amid the birds, she had gone back to sleep and woken up on clean sheets.
She was sore everywhere, torn and aching, but smelling of soap and antiseptic ointments.
There was a soft, clean pad between her legs.

She reached up to the throbbing cut on her lip, but Madame Clos stopped her. “Don’t
touch,” she whispered. “It’s not so bad and there won’t be a scar. You’ll be fine
in a few days; young flesh heals fast.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head.
“We’re lucky this sort of thing hasn’t happened more, given what animals the Germans
are.”

Leonie was allowed to sleep for what seemed like a week. The pills erased the hours
along with the pain so she had no idea what day it was when she felt a hand on her
shoulder, shaking her hard.

“Wake up.” Madame Clos was angry. She was breathing heavily and her kohl was streaked
all the way down her cheeks. “Get up. Enough slacking off,” she said and stripped
off the blankets. “I want you to go over to Freddy’s bar and get me a
bottle.” She pulled Leonie to her feet and shoved her arms into the sleeves of a man’s
trench coat. At the front door, she put a gold coin into her hand. “If you aren’t
back in fifteen minutes, I’ll get Simone’s captain out of bed and send him after you.”

Leonie clutched at the railing as she crept downstairs on unsteady legs. Out on the
street, she was dizzy and lost. It had been months since she’d been outside; after
one of the girls ran away, Madame had hidden everyone’s clothes and shoes and done
all the marketing herself.

She looked up and down the street and tried to get her bearings. She remembered that
the bar was around the block and headed to the left. She was entirely alone. All of
the windows were dark, the storefront shutters down and padlocked. Fred-dy’s was locked
up tight.

The taste of bile rose from the back of Leonie’s throat into her mouth. The cobblestones
were cold and slick under her naked feet and she was fully awake, facing the first
real choice she’d had in nearly two years.

She could turn down the alley and go to the back door, where Freddy would certainly
sell her the bottle, though she knew he would demand more than Madame’s money. Leonie
clenched her fist around the coin in the deep pocket of the coat. The wool reeked
of cigar smoke. She turned and crossed the street, deciding that she would never get
down on her knees like that again.

Stepping carefully to avoid the broken glass glittering on the pavement, she kept
close to the buildings. She could not risk being caught as she was—barefoot, bareheaded,
and wearing nothing but a cotton shift under a German officer’s coat.

She moved quickly, without knowing where to go. Leonie had no family. She had not
seen any of her friends or acquaintances for so long, she had no idea what they might
say or do if
she showed up as she was. When she rounded the corner and found herself in front of
the bar again, a wave of fear erased the last bit of fog behind Leonie’s eyes.

She started running. Nearly all of the streetlights were out and she had no idea where
she was going as she sprinted, block after block, as fast as she could, over a bridge
and past a long row of German trucks parked for the night. Leonie did not slow down
until she had no choice but to stop and catch her breath. Hiding in the shadows of
a deep doorway, she looked out over an unfamiliar little square with wooden benches,
some empty flower beds, a dry fountain in the center. On the far side of the plaza
stood a tall gray lady with her head tilted to one side, as though she were listening
to a distant song from beneath her granite veil.

Leonie stared at the statue for a long time, shivering like a rabbit, until an engine
backfired and sent her racing past the fountain and down the alley beside the convent.
She tapped on the ancient kitchen door, quietly but steadily, until she heard a bolt
click and slide open. A nun in a white habit caught her by the arm as she fell to
the floor and begged for her life.