The Forest of Vanishing Stars(81)
Chaim’s voice was hollow as he began to speak again. “The day they came to move us all to the ghetto, they bound Zus’s hands and feet tightly, tied him to his stove so he couldn’t move. They beat Shifra unconscious, right in front of him, and then shot her and little Helena while he begged for their lives. They left, laughing, saying that by the time anyone found him, he’d be dead, too, but in the meantime, he could think about how it was his fault that his family was dead. They must have thought that no one would come to save him, since the Jews had all been moved. But five days later, I was able to sneak out with a work detachment, and I made my way back to our village. I found Zus, delirious, still tied to the stove. He had stopped trying to escape; he had given up. I brought him back to the ghetto, because I couldn’t abandon my own family, and I knew nowhere else to take him to nurse him back to health. His body eventually healed, but the rest of him…”
Yona choked on a sob as Chaim paused.
“He was whole once, Yona,” Chaim said after a moment. “He laughed all the time. He loved life, but they broke him. He’s broken.”
“We all are,” Yona murmured, but she knew now that Zus had been shattered in a different way than she had. You can’t heal a heart that has been smashed to pieces; you can only move forward, doing your best to hold the shards together until they eventually form into something new.
“He cares for you, Yona,” Chaim added after a few minutes. “I didn’t realize it at first, maybe because he was so careful to respect the fact that you were already with Aleksander. But when you left last month, I saw some of the light go out of him. If we’re fortunate enough to make it through this alive, you must promise to never leave again, not without warning. Please. We are your family now. All of us. But Zus… No matter what you feel for him, you must know that in a corner of his heart, something blooms for you.”
Yona bowed her head. She wanted to give Chaim her word that she wouldn’t leave, but she didn’t know what the future would bring. All she could say was, “I care for him, too, Chaim.”
He must have heard the truth of it in her voice, for he nodded, and after a while, he fell back and rejoined his family, leaving Yona to walk alone once again.
* * *
Yona’s group had just begun their second evening of walking, after a long afternoon break to eat and rest, when they heard the first signs of the German incursion. She had been wondering how Zus’s group was doing as she led them past an overgrown, abandoned dirt road that didn’t look like it had been used in months, but now, as twilight fell, the warm evening stillness was broken by the rumble of approaching trucks. Instantly, Yona hushed her group and pulled them back behind the trees. Less than two minutes later, two large vehicles passed, each loaded with several German soldiers, each bearing a swastika flag that whipped in the wind.
“They’re really here,” Rosalia whispered once the trucks had disappeared into the distance. The vehicles were heading southeast, and Yona had to swallow a lump of fear in her throat before she replied. What if Zus’s group was in the convoy’s path? What if she had let him go straight into harm’s way? She would never forgive herself.
“We’re only a day or so from the swamp now,” Yona said, trying to hide her fear. She looked back at Rosalia and forced a resolute smile. “We must keep moving.”
Rosalia nodded, but from the way she avoided looking Yona in the eye, Yona knew the other woman doubted the plan, perhaps even doubted that there was, indeed, a swamp where Yona had said it would be.
The following evening, the group paused by a stream to drink and gather some berries. They were all exhausted and hungry; they’d been eating little so their supplies might last, for they didn’t know how long they’d have to wait out the Germans, or what food might be available to them in the swamp. They were almost there; Yona felt certain of it. The ground beneath them was losing its firmness, the moss and ferns growing lusher.
Yona had just bent for a drink beside Maia, the little daughter of the Gulniks, when the first gunshots rang out, a staccato hail of them, one flying close enough to Yona that she could feel it as it passed above her head. Immediately, she flattened herself on her belly, pulling the girl down with her. Rosalia hit the ground, too, but some of the others merely looked confused; Oscher actually took a step out into the open, craning his neck as he scanned the forest curiously.
“Get down!” Yona hissed, crawling forward and tugging at his pants leg, and then at Bina’s leg, too. They both looked down at her, blinking, bewildered, but after a moment, they crouched beside her, then flattened themselves on the earth, too. “Is everyone all right?”
There was a mumbled chorus of assents, a panicked glancing around to ensure that everyone was accounted for. They were, thank God, and now Yona gestured silently for the others to follow her, keeping low. There were more bullets overhead, and then a German shouting in the distance, “Juden, Juden, kommt raus, wo immer ihr seid!” followed by a chorus of laughter. “Jews, Jews, come out wherever you are,” the German voice repeated in a singsong, and then there were more bullets whizzing around them. In that instant, Yona understood that they weren’t actually being fired upon; the Germans didn’t know they were there. This was merely posturing between the soldiers, an amusement. They were playacting at the sport of hunting men.