Beyond the Shadow of Night(64)

He jumped off his bed and strode over to the others.

“No,” he said. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve been doing?”

Nobody replied. A few glances were exchanged, one or two shook their heads, the others simply curled up on their beds. Now Asher was close to them he could see how their bones jutted out of fleshless skin, how the outline of their teeth showed through their cheeks.

He pointed to one. “You,” he said. “Why do you look so ill?”

Again, there were a few knowing looks.

“Just rest,” the man said. “Rest and eat as much as you can.”

“But what are we here for?”

“If you really want to know,” another said, “we are the Totenjuden.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we do as we’re told.”

Asher hesitated, but thanked the man and returned to his bed.

One or two of the newer men gave him curious looks.

“What?” he said to them.

“You don’t speak German, do you?” one said.

Asher shook his head.

“The word toten means anything to do with killing or death.”

Asher lay back on his bed and wondered what was going on.



Later that evening, there was food. It was only a watery potato soup and a chunk of stale bread, but Asher was getting accustomed to sleeping on a rumbling stomach. He was cold too, but at least he was sleeping on a bed; that was something to be grateful for. He spent a few minutes convincing himself that the rest of his family were safe, that Rina was sleeping not too far from him, the others farther away but also safe. It was a comforting thought, and eventually he drifted into a deep slumber.

He was woken up by a raucous metallic banging. While pulling himself out of sleep, he had to think where he was. But that nauseating smell seemed stronger than ever. And he was still cold. So yes, he was still in this camp, whatever it was.

The guard, waiting just inside the door, stopped banging on his metal tray for a moment to shout out instructions. He told them to get up immediately and follow him. They were led out of the cabin, along a path enclosed with barbed wire, and past a few buildings—more of those that Asher found worryingly familiar.

He told himself they didn’t matter just now. They entered a forest of huge pine trees and were led to a small clearing, where they were told to wait while the guard took two of them away.

While they waited, Asher peered beyond the edge of the forest. Between the trunks and foliage, he could make out a large clearing, like a field, but with smoke rising from something—some structure raised a few feet off the ground with objects lying on it.

It looked nothing like any field of crops he’d ever seen.

For a second he thought they looked like bodies of some sort. But he’d heard no gunshots, so they couldn’t have been people—and certainly not on that scale; the structure was quite long—perhaps a hundred feet or so. What were those things on it? Animals? No; that didn’t make sense either.

As he was straining to see, one of the guards moved toward him and shouted, pointing in the other direction.

Asher looked away, toward the tall trees, and between them the sun just poking over the horizon. It reminded him of his childhood, tending to the fields on the farm in Dyovsta, of the glorious sunrises and sunsets he’d witnessed during the harvest season, when they’d worked every daylight hour. He thought of Mykhail—of their games, their fishing trips, of their shared enthusiasm for tractors. He cursed his mama for taking the family away from Dyovsta, and immediately felt sick with guilt at that thought. It wasn’t her fault, and even Warsaw, busy and congested as it was, had never had this heavy stench hanging over it like a shroud of malevolent fog.

The two workers returned carrying lots of axes, dropping them in a pile on the floor for the other men to pick up.

The guard led the men farther into the forest, to another clearing where trees had recently been felled. There, the smell of pine and cut wood was a blessed relief. A few minutes later, they were all chopping the felled trees into more manageable chunks.

Asher didn’t know why they were doing this. For a moment, it crossed his mind that they were simply producing firewood for the cabins, but this was a huge amount of wood for a dozen or so cabins.

At first it didn’t seem so bad; at least he was generating some heat. However, after half an hour he was soaked in sweat and exhausted. A bucket of water was brought by the guard and placed nearby, and each man had his turn drinking from it.

An hour later, Asher was beyond exhaustion, and still they were being told to chop more. A few times he felt faint, almost keeling over.

And still, after a couple of hours, with the sun way above the horizon, they were told to continue. The more wood Asher chopped, the more logs there were to arrange into piles. By now his muscles were numb, and he felt no pain. Even the discomfort in his throat, sticky-dry again from dehydration, was ignored.

Finally, after what Asher thought was probably three hours, they were ordered back to their barracks. Now he understood—indeed all of them did, judging by their faces—what the other Totenjuden had meant when they’d told the new men to simply rest and eat as much as possible. Nobody spoke; they all merely collapsed on their beds and rested.

They had ten minutes. After that, a different guard came in and gave them some more orders. It was an effort for Asher to move his stiffened muscles, but again he followed the others out of the cabin.