The Forest of Vanishing Stars(15)

“Last summer, the Germans came,” he continued, his voice flattening into a monotone. “A month after they arrived, they moved all the Jews of our town into a tiny ghetto, in horrible conditions. We received no more than a piece of bread each day. And then they began to murder us, at random.”

He went silent again, and Yona tried to hold back tears. “I—I don’t understand.”

Isaac’s shrug was heavy, and he avoided Yona’s gaze as he went on. “In October, they killed three hundred Jews for sport. It was no secret. They wanted us to know, to be afraid. They wanted us aware that, to them, our lives held no value, that we lived or died at their whim. But then the killing ceased for a while, and we thought perhaps they have had their fill of our blood. Perhaps we are safe now. Perhaps they wish only to demean us, to humiliate us, to keep us in squalor, which is all terrible, Yona, but at least we were alive.

“Then, just a few weeks ago, I received word, through a Belorussian policeman I have known my whole life, that there was a large Aktion planned. There were plans to kill more of us, thousands, maybe all of us. I told my wife, and she did not believe me. I wanted us to run, to try to escape with our daughter, because to stay seemed to be waiting only for death, now or later. Still, Esta said, ‘It is not true. How could they kill thousands of us anyhow? Where would they put us? What good would it do?’ Then, one day just two weeks ago, I was walking home from a job cleaning the toilets of the Germans when I passed a young mother carrying an infant; she was being teased by a German soldier. I did not know all the words he was saying, for he spoke his language, and it was clear she did not understand, either. He reached for her baby, a little girl, and the mother pulled away, but he reached in to tickle the child, who giggled. I will never forget the sound of that laugh, Yona, for it changed everything. It made the mother relax. It made her think the man was kind. So she reluctantly let him take the baby, who could not have been more than six months old, and, with a laugh of his own, he grasped the baby by her feet and swung her into the wall of the building beside them, smashing her tiny skull.”

Yona let out a small moan of disbelief.

“The sound of the mother’s scream will never leave me,” Isaac concluded, finally looking at Yona. “The German’s face never changed as he turned, shot the mother right between the eyes, and strolled away.” He took a deep breath. “I took my wife and my child and slipped into the forest that night through a tunnel that had been dug beneath the wall. We joined an escape that had already been planned. Eleven of us made the attempt, and we were spotted; they fired upon us, and most of the others fell. Perhaps they thought they got all of us, for they didn’t follow. And now, here we are.”

Isaac seemed to know that there were no words to say after that, for he closed his eyes and settled back against the reed bed Yona had built to make him comfortable. After fifteen minutes had passed, his breathing lengthened, and Yona knew he had fallen asleep, the pain of recounting his terrible story exhausting him. But even after he had found peace in slumber, she could not move. She knew that Isaac’s words had been true, but how was it possible? Even after years of being told by Jerusza that mankind was not to be trusted, the words shook her to the core. She had preferred always to believe in the things she had seen in the villages: the laughter, the hugs, the togetherness, the love. But had Jerusza been right about this, too?

For two nights, Yona could hardly sleep, for she could hear Isaac’s voice in her head, and she could see the things he had told her unfolding in startling clarity each time she began to dream. On her fourteenth morning with the family, she awoke with a sense of foreboding deep in the pit of her belly. Something was lurking in the darkness, something just beyond their reach, and they were no longer safe here.

“We need to move today,” Yona said as the family sat down around the remains of the previous night’s fire to have a small breakfast of acorn coffee and berries. Isaac was improving by the day, and Yona was confident that he could keep up a slow pace through the forest if she and Esta helped support him. “I can feel it in my bones. It’s time.”

Isaac nodded in solemn agreement, but Esta’s back stiffened and she glanced at her husband in disbelief before turning to Yona. “We are perfectly safe here. And my husband is not well enough to travel.”

“I am, Esta,” he protested. “I must be. Yona is right.”

“Because she feels it in her bones? That is nonsense. No one is after us anymore. What do they care? Three Jews who escaped through their sieve, no matter. We are safe now.”

“I don’t think you are,” Yona said after a long silence. She hadn’t thought much about the future and how long she would stay with the family, but she knew she couldn’t just desert them. We are all interconnected, Jerusza had said on her deathbed. Once fates intertwine, they are forever linked. “We are too close to where you came from. We must move deeper into the forest. We can go slowly, but we need to begin.”

“We?” Esta repeated, her tone suddenly so bitter that Isaac flinched, his gaze flicking from his wife to Yona and back again in confusion. “You have helped us, Yona, but you are not one of us. How can we trust you?”

“Esta, my dear, Yona saved my life,” Isaac protested. “She brought Chana back to us. She has given us two miracles. How can you doubt her?”

Esta’s mouth was set in a firm line. She turned to her husband. “Didn’t we trust that the Germans would let us live, too? And yet they have already killed my mother and yours, for no reason at all. We’d be dead, too, if we had stayed. No, Isaac, we trust no one but ourselves from now on. We made that promise. And she is not like us.”