The World That We Knew(16)

“Of course.” Ava was learning human behavior by the minute, although as far as she could tell there was no logic involved.

Ettie glanced at Lea. “I assume this is the daughter.” When Ava nodded, Ettie said, “Make sure she behaves.”

Lea took an instant dislike to the red-haired girl, whose face was pale with anxiety despite her domineering manner. As for Ettie, she ignored Lea completely. All she could think about were the shoddy visas she and Marta carried. Marta, on the other hand, was more than ready to befriend Lea. There were only a few years between them, and Marta was so unworldly and childlike that she seemed younger than the angry twelve-year-old who shared their compartment. Ever since they’d left home, Marta had been crying on and off as she thought of how their mother would react when she discovered they had climbed out the kitchen window. It was a relief to talk to someone else who had left her home behind.

“We know your mother,” she told Lea.

Lea narrowed her eyes. What was this?

“We hardly know her at all,” Ettie interrupted. She wished she’d thought to tell Hanni to get them tickets in different compartments. There was no need for Lea to know the truth of her situation.

“You seem to know Ava.” Lea did her best to figure out what was being hidden from her. There was a secret, one that everyone, including her mother, had been privy to, except for her. “She certainly knows you.”

“She’s my maker,” Ava said simply.

Ettie gave the creature a scathing look. She hadn’t thought the golem would come to life as an idiot. “Stop talking,” she told Ava.

“Does she answer to you?” Lea asked Ettie. “Because she told me she answered to my mother and no one else.”

“We all answer to God, don’t we?” Ettie said.

It was a difficult statement to dispute. Ettie was tricky that way. She knew how to answer a question with a question. Still, Lea knew something was amiss. When the train began to move, she took hold of her suitcase. She should not be here. She should be with her mother. They’d held hands, they’d run with blood on their shoes, they’d slept in the same bed when there were thunderstorms, they’d celebrated Passover with a single apple and no matzoh, reading from a Haggadah, though to own such a book was a crime. Everything was a crime in their world, but she must return to where she belonged. If her mother and Bobeshi were arrested, she would go with them. She could save them; she knew that she could if only she had the chance. The train was still going slowly. It had to be now. Lea could leap onto the platform and then find her way home. She stood up, suitcase in hand, but the train was moving faster than she’d initially thought, and she stumbled. Ava reached out to stop her fall.

“We must do as we’re told,” Ava reminded her. “We will honor your mother and follow her instructions.”

“Because she is your maker?” Lea asked, her heart breaking.

Ava shook her head. “Because she is yours.”



Once they had left the outskirts of the city, Ava gazed out the window. She could see the world beyond men’s eyes. There were angels in the canopy of the trees that lined the train tracks. Melahel, angel of safe travel and healing. Haiel, angel of courage. Ornael, the angel of patience who guards against sorrow. Each time someone was born, three angels were sent to watch over her for a lifetime, and these angels were Lea’s. Seventy-two angels guided humanity, but men and women couldn’t see them and, on those rare occasions when the angels spoke, they couldn’t hear. But Ava observed their world as easily as she did the world of human beings. She spied Azriel, the angel that could be seen by human eyes in the final instants of a life. He was following the train, for his work was never done. He came to peer in their window, and Ava held Lea’s hand. She wasn’t about to let him come anywhere near Hanni’s daughter.

Lea pulled away. “I won’t run,” she said.

At least not yet, not until she was ready, not until she had a plan. She looked out the window, but all she saw was her own reflection in the glass. Lea was someone completely different than the person she’d been before her grandmother told her to pack up her suitcase. She was the tall, resentful girl who’d once had a mother and a grandmother and a father, who went to school and was the best student in her class, who always followed rules, who had never been kissed, not a real kiss, not one she wanted, who did as she was told, who had no idea there were angels above them.



All through the night they could hear the wheels of the train; the sound soothed them and made them forget everything that had happened. Berlin was far away, it was slipping into the darkness, a tiger of a city filled with soot and ashes, where glass was never swept up, and fires were burned in the hallways of apartment houses, and people disappeared without a trace, and shoes littered the streets, left behind by those who had struggled. The sisters fell asleep in each other’s arms and dreamed of their mother’s kitchen and the babies that had been born there. Lea curled up with her head against the glass. She still had her hand wrapped around the scissors, and in her sleep she saw flowers blooming in their yard, each grown from a murdered girl’s tooth, on a stalk of thorns.

Heart of my heart, love of my life, the one loss I will never survive.

Ava felt something dark approaching, a black cloud of angels. Angel of destiny, angel of confusion, angel of crimes and of discovery, angel of rage, angel of the wicked, angel of the fallen. It happened at dawn, just before they reached the French border. The train suddenly stopped, so unexpectedly people were thrown from their seats, roughly awakened from their dreams. In the thin blue light of morning, they could see German army trucks. Soldiers were shouting orders. It was nearly April but frost was still on the ground. Passengers with suspect papers, or those who had what were considered Jewish features, were pulled from the train and led into the field, clinging to their suitcases, their eyes squinting in the new light. Some wore coats, others had their shoes off and were in their socks as they walked through the tall grass. Women and children were separated, and panicked mothers called out the names of their daughters and sons. Men suspected of being Jews were forced to pull down their pants to reveal whether or not they had been circumcised. A woman argued with a soldier, insisting she wasn’t a Jew. In an instant she was knocked to the ground, where she lay sprawled and unmoving, disappearing into the tall grass. A shot rang out. After that, no one in the lineup argued.