Day After Night (27 page)

Shayndel’s attention was fixed on the battered watch beside her ear. She held it up
to a pale yellow patch of light, astonished that it had been only five minutes since
she had last looked.

Leonie stirred on the cot beside her. Shayndel saw that her eyes were open and lifted
the blanket, signaling her to come and join her. They held each other close, and the
next time Shayndel held the watch to the light it was time.

She slipped her shoes on as she reached under the bed for
the bundle Nathan had given her. Leonie helped her untie the twine, unwrap the bottle
of chloroform, and fold the cotton batting into a compress. Tedi and Zorah watched
from either end of the barrack, waiting for Shayndel to move.

When she stood, the others rose, and the four of them tiptoed to Lotte’s cot. Leonie
poured the clear liquid onto the gag, releasing a cloying, confectionary-sweet aroma.
Tedi held her breath and pulled back the blanket.

They found Lotte lying facedown, which complicated things. Shayndel pointed orders
for Tedi to grab Lotte’s shoulders and for Zorah to take her by the hip. She held
up three fingers and when she dropped the third, they rolled her onto her back in
one deft move while Leonie pressed the cloth over her nose and mouth. Lotte flailed
for a moment but the chloroform took effect quickly, and Tedi and Leonie set to work
lashing her wrists to the metal rail of the cot. Zorah and Shayndel tied her ankles
down.

They glanced at each other across the body on the bed, nodding congratulations. But
Lotte began to stir and within a few moments was thrashing from side to side so violently,
she twisted her left leg free. Zorah and Shayndel struggled to hold her down and retie
the knots, but the rope they had been given kept breaking.

Shayndel was furious. Did they really think kitchen twine would be strong enough to
restrain anyone?

Leonie retrieved the compress from the floor and held it over Lotte’s face, dousing
the cloth until chloroform soaked through and began running down the sides of her
neck. Tedi turned away to avoid the dizzying effect of the chemical, amazed that Leonie
could be so close to the fumes and remain conscious.

After a few moments, the stuff took effect and Leonie set the
bottle down, pushed up Lotte’s sleeve, and twisted her limp arm to show them the double-thunderbolt
tattoo of the SS.

Tedi whispered, “Impossible.”

“Tell me, what is impossible anymore?” Zorah muttered as she pulled the pillow out
from under Lotte’s head and placed it over the wet compress covering her face. Zorah
fixed her eyes on Shayndel, who met her gaze and nodded. Leonie and Tedi stepped closer,
tight-lipped, and watched as Zorah pressed the pillow down and held it with all of
her strength. Lotte’s body reacted instantly and with astonishing force, rising an
inch off the cot. The others added their hands and weight to the job as spasms rattled
the bed.

Leonie imagined Lucas’s face under her hands. Tedi throttled the men who had raped
her. Zorah killed the neighbor who betrayed Jacob’s mother. Shayndel felt the muscles
in her arms shaking with exertion, avenging Wolfe, Malka, Noah, her mother and father,
Shmuley, and far too many others.

Finally, Leonie, panting with effort and emotion, slid her hand under the pillow in
search of a pulse. “We can stop,” she whispered.

They stood up, avoiding one another’s eyes as they arranged the body on its side and
tied it in place. Tedi fussed with the blanket, trying to make it look as if Lotte
were merely sleeping. “That’s enough,” said Shayndel. “No one is going to worry about
why we’re leaving her here.”

The barrack door opened a few minutes later and the order was whispered: “Now.”

Shayndel, Tedi, Leonie, and Zorah went from bed to bed, waking each girl as gently
as they could, leaning down to whisper, “Wake up, shhhh. Don’t be afraid. We are leaving,
shhh. Tonight we escape from this place. Get dressed, hurry. Don’t worry, but be quick.
We are going with you, too. Bring nothing. Hurry.”

The urgency and excitement in their voices turned everyone out of bed and the girls
were on their feet before their eyes adjusted to the dimness. They bumped into the
edges of beds as they dressed, while Shayndel walked up and down the center of the
barrack, putting her finger to her lips and giving a thumbs-up. Zorah helped one woman
hunt for her shoes. Leonie buttoned dresses.

Esther was the first one ready, waiting beside her cot, where the blanket had been
neatly tucked in. She carried nothing in her hands, as she had been ordered. But she
wore the heavy fur coat she had brought from Poland, a pair of silver candlesticks
poking out of its bulging pockets. She had her hand on top of Jacob’s head and kept
his face turned toward the door.

No one looked at Lotte.

As soon as they were dressed, the women began jamming their belongings into sacks
and suitcases.

“No, no,” Tedi whispered to one girl stuffing a pillowcase with clothes. “We cannot
bring anything with us.”

Leonie tried to reason with another busy filling a bulky valise. “We are going to
be running in the dark. Carrying this will be dangerous.”

When Shayndel saw that no one was paying any attention to the order, she tried pulling
things out of people’s hands until one woman clasped a photograph album to her chest
and said, “If I cannot take my family with me, I will stay here.”

“I’m sorry,” Shayndel said, and went to retrieve her ruck-sack, with her pictures
inside.

The flutter of packing and preparation came to a halt as a loud, piercing scream rose
from somewhere in the near distance.

No one moved. A minute passed and then another, but there was no alarm, no sound of
boots on the ground, no orders
shouted in English. Someone in the barrack started weeping softly but she was shushed
from every corner.

Shayndel could barely breathe. She kept her eye on the wristwatch for four long minutes,
until the door opened.

A silhouette of a man with a gun over his shoulder appeared. “Hurry up, children,”
said a familiar voice. “Come, my little ones,” Goldberg said in Yiddish.

Shayndel was the first one outside, with Zorah, Esther, and Jacob right behind her.
Leonie stopped at the foot of Lotte’s cot, but Tedi put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s
over,” she said, and gently guided her out the door.

The women found themselves surrounded by Palmachniks dressed in dark clothes and black
caps. They carried guns, waved for them to follow, and started at a fast trot toward
the back of the camp; their barrack was closest to the front, which meant they had
the farthest to run.

The commandos shepherded them through the camp, avoiding the glare of the lights by
zigzagging from one shadow to the next, around barracks and latrines. Crossing the
parade ground, Zorah spotted four Palmach fighters dragging the two burly Poles she
had talked to in the clinic—now gagged and bound at the wrists—in the opposite direction
from everyone else. As she turned to watch them shoved through the back door of Delousing
and out of her story forever, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her forward toward
the back side of the dining hall. Esther and Jacob and the rest of the girls in their
barrack pressed themselves flat against the wooden wall and listened to the sounds
of footsteps moving into the distance, and then … nothing.

Zorah began to worry. They were certainly the last group to be released; perhaps they
had been forgotten. Or maybe they
were being used as decoys, to be discovered and sacrificed as a diversion so that
the others could get away. It took Jacob three tugs on her sleeve before he got her
attention and pointed to the wall where he had found “Esther” among the names and
dates scratched into the wooden clapboard. Zorah touched his hair and thought, He
will be all right. No matter what happens tonight, he must be all right.

A minute later, a man’s head appeared around the corner of the building and they were
on the move again. In single file, they made for a narrow gash that had been cut in
the promenade fence. Zorah thought the women were amazingly fast considering what
they were carrying. She followed Esther through the jagged hole, scratching her hands
on the barbwire as she held it away from the fur coat.

When Zorah stepped into the corridor that had separated the men’s and women’s barracks,
the fences, which were at least twenty feet apart, seemed to close in around her.
She froze, confused and trapped, staring as the others ran toward the northern fence.
They leaned into the effort, kicking their heels like athletes, racing toward an exit
that she could not see. Some of the overhead lights had been extinguished, so that
when people reached the shadows, it appeared that they vanished into the air.

The image overwhelmed Zorah with the need to join them on the other side—whatever
that might mean. She made a dash for it, tearing past Jacob and Esther, weaving to
avoid suitcases, brushing against Palmach gun barrels, flying with strength and speed
she had never felt before. Running away.

She nearly laughed when she reached the opening in the fence, wide enough for a truck.
She didn’t stop running once she got through, savoring her momentum and the air on
her
face. She ran past a group of men, ignoring their hoarse whispers to “Stop. Stop!”

She would have run until daylight, but the thought of Esther and Jacob slowed her.
They would be frantic if she disappeared, so she looped around and trotted back. Esther
rushed into her arms. Jacob hugged her around the waist.

Once Shayndel saw Zorah, she knew that everyone in her barrack was safely out and
her official duties were over. Still, she could not help but take stock of the situation,
as though she were still responsible. She counted eighty refugees, including twenty
women with children, standing in the dark in the middle of a chilly field. There were
at least seventy Palmach rescuers as well, smoking and muttering among themselves.

Off to the east, she heard the faint whine of an engine and caught sight of a ragged
line of people moving toward the road. There was another group, too—no more than ten—wandering
due north. I hope these people know what they are doing, she thought, as time passed
without a word of reassurance or a hint of where her group was headed.

Tedi stood beside Shayndel, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She felt
the muscles in her legs tense up, as though she were about to skate down a frozen
canal. She leaned forward into a crouch, grabbed her thighs, and waited for the starting
gun, for someone to give the order so she could go. She swayed side to side, faster
and faster, mouthing the words,
ready, set, go.

Shayndel saw her rocking and noticed Leonie shivering. She walked over to the Palmachniks.
“Why aren’t we going?”

A husky man glared and put a finger to his lips but one of the others leaned close
and said, “One of our guys is still inside to make sure we won’t be followed.”

Shayndel nodded and returned to her friends, who were looking up toward the mountains,
where a signal fire had been lit. She wondered how far away the bonfire was, and if
that was where they were headed, and whether it wasn’t a tip-off to the British. Her
jaw ached with tension. If we don’t go soon, I’m going to start walking and the hell
with them all, she thought as her hand flew up to her shoulder, searching for the
strap of her long-lost gun.

“Look,” someone whispered. All heads turned as a man ran out of the camp. The Palmachniks
immediately shouldered their packs and guns, fanned out among the escapees, and began
directing them east toward the road and the mountains.

Tedi dashed over to one of the men in front and asked, “Where are we going?”

“Kibbutz Yagur,” he said. “By the time we reach the road, the trucks should be there
to pick us up.”

It was a rough slog through the fields. Recently plowed, they were deeply rutted and
surprisingly wet, and the children struggled in the furrows. People carrying heavy
loads lost their balance and fell to their knees.

Leonie was having a hard time keeping her shoes on. After the mud sucked one of them
off completely, she crouched down to search for it, but a Palmachnik grabbed her arm.
“My shoe,” she explained, but he pulled her to her feet and she had no choice but
to limp after him. When the other shoe disappeared, she continued in her socks, which
quickly became so wet and heavy, she peeled them off and walked barefoot.

By the time she reached the road, Leonie was in tears.

“Where were you?” Shayndel asked.

“I lost my shoes,” she said, looking at her cold, aching feet. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Shayndel said. “We’ll find you some others.”

“Leave it to me,” Tedi said, and began walking up and down the line, asking if anyone
had an extra pair of shoes, filling her nose with the expectant smell of freshly turned
earth, while keeping an eye out for Zorah, Esther, and Jacob.

They were still making their way through the field. Something about being out in the
open had frightened Jacob badly. Esther and Zorah could only carry him for a few paces
at a time, and they fell so far behind that a man was sent back to retrieve them.

“Give him to me,” he said, swinging the boy over his head and onto his shoulders as
though he were no heavier than a doll.

Esther put her hand on Jacob’s leg and scrambled alongside. Zorah smiled at how much
Jacob’s mount looked like a gorilla, with his bandy legs and flatfooted gait. The
little boy struggled and squirmed at first, but finally settled down and rested his
chin on top of the man’s head, wrapping his arms around the sides of his neck. In
the darkness, they looked like a father and son on their way home from an afternoon
in the park.

Will Jacob remember this? Zorah wondered. Will he someday make his grandchildren yawn
with boredom as he repeats the story of how a soldier carried him away from captivity
in Atlit? Zorah remembered how her mother used to carry her little brother on her
hip when he was a baby, but she had no memory of being carried herself.