Читать книгу People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks - Страница 12

Here lies the grave. Stay, for a while, when the forest listens.

Take off your caps! Here rests the flower of a people that knows how to die.

—Inscription, World War II memorial, Bosnia

THE WIND BLEW ACROSS the Miljacka River, hard as a slap. Lola’s thin coat was no protection. She ran across the narrow bridge, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. On the other side of the river, a set of rough-hewn stone stairs rose abruptly, leading to a warren of narrow lanes lined with shabby apartment buildings. Lola took the stairs two at a time and turned in to the second alleyway, sheltered at last from the bitter gusts.

It was not yet midnight, so the outer door to her building hadn’t been locked. Inside, it was not much warmer than on the street. She steadied herself and took a moment to catch her breath. A heavy smell of boiled cabbage and fresh cat piss hung over the foyer. Lola crept up the stairs and gently turned the latch on her family’s apartment. Although her right hand reached up instinctively to touch the mezuzah on the doorjamb before she slipped inside, Lola could not have said why. She took off her coat, unlaced her boots, and carried them as she tiptoed past the sleeping forms of her mother and father. The apartment was one room, with a dividing curtain the only privacy.

Her little sister was just a bulge beneath the quilt. Lola lifted the coverlet and slid in beside her. Dora was curled up like a small animal, radiating welcome heat. Lola reached for the warmth of her sister’s back. The child protested in her sleep, uttering a tiny cry and pulling away. She tucked her icy hands into her own armpits. Despite the cold, her face was still flushed, her brow still damp from the dancing, and if her father woke, he might notice that.

Lola loved the dancing. That was what had lured her to the Young Guardians meetings. She liked the hiking, too; the long, hard walks in the mountains to a hanging lake or the ruins of an ancient fortress. The rest of it, she didn’t care much for. The endless discussions of politics bored her. And the Hebrew—she didn’t even enjoy reading in her own language, much less struggling to decode the strange black squiggles that Mordechai was always trying to get her to remember.

She thought about his arm across her shoulder in the circle. She could still feel the pleasant weight of it, muscular from farm labor. When he’d rolled up his sleeves, his forearm had been brown and hard as a hazelnut. Even though she didn’t know the steps, it was easy to follow the dance with him beside her, smiling encouragement. A Sarajevan—even a poor one like Lola—would never give a second glance to a Bosnian peasant. Never mind if the farmer was quite well-off, a city person felt superior. But Mordechai was another thing entirely. He’d grown up in Travnik, which, while not Sarajevo, was a fine town nevertheless. He was educated; he’d attended the gymnasium. Yet two years earlier, at the age of seventeen, he’d gone off on a boat to Palestine to work on a farm. And not a prosperous farm either, by his description. A dried-out, barren piece of dust where you had to break your back to raise a crop. And for no profit, just the food in your mouth and the work clothes on your back. Worse than a peasant, really. Yet when he talked about it, it was as if there was no more fascinating or noble profession in the world than digging irrigation ditches and harvesting dates.

Lola loved listening to Mordechai when he talked about all the practical things a pioneer had to know, like how to treat a scorpion bite or stanch a bad cut; how to site a sanitary latrine or improvise a shelter. Lola knew she would never leave home to pioneer in Palestine, but she liked to think about the kind of adventurous life that might demand such skills. And she liked to think about Mordechai. The way he spoke reminded her of the old Ladino songs her grandfather had sung to her when she was a little girl. He had a seed stand at the open-air market, and Lola’s mother would sometimes leave her there with him while she worked. Grandfather was full of tales of knights and hidalgos, and poems from a magic place called Sepharad, where he said their ancestors had lived long ago. Mordechai spoke about his new land as if it were Sepharad. He told the group that he couldn’t wait to get back there, to Eretz Israel. “I am jealous of every sunrise I am not there to see the white stones of the Jordan Valley turn to gold.”

Lola didn’t speak up in the group discussions. She felt stupid compared to the others. Many of them were Svabo Jijos, Yiddish-speaking Jews, who had come to the city with the Austrian occupation in the late nineteenth century. Ladino-speaking families like Lola’s had been in the city since 1565, when Sarajevo was part of the Ottoman empire, and the Muslim sultan had offered refuge from Christian persecution. Most of those who came had been wandering since the expulsion from Spain in 1492, unable to find a permanent home. They had found peace in Sarajevo, and acceptance, but only a few families had really prospered. Most remained small-time merchants like her grandfather, or artisans with simple skills. The Svabo Jijos were more educated, more European in their outlook. Very soon they had much better jobs and were blending with the highest ranks of Sarajevan society. Their children went to the gymnasium and even sometimes to the university. At the Young Guardians, they were the natural leaders.

One was the daughter of a city councilor, one the son of the pharmacist, a widower, for whom Lola’s mother did laundry. Another girl’s father was a bookkeeper at the finance ministry, where Lola’s father worked as a janitor. But Mordechai treated everyone as an equal, so gradually she gathered enough courage to ask a question.

“But Mordechai,” she’d asked shyly, “aren’t you glad to be home in your own country, speaking your own language, not having to work so hard?”

Mordechai had turned to her with a smile. “This isn’t my home,” he said gently. “And it isn’t yours, either. The only true home for Jews is Eretz Israel. And that’s why I’m here, to tell you all about the life you could have, to prepare you, and to bring you back with me, to build our Jewish homeland.”

He raised his arms, as if including her in a communal embrace. “‘If you will it, it is no dream.’” He paused, letting the words hang in the air. “A great man said that, and I believe it. What about you, Lola, will you act your dreams, and make them real?” She blushed, unused to the attention, and Mordechai smiled kindly. Then he spread his hands to include the whole group. “But think of this. What do you will? Is it to do the pigeon dance, scratching around for the crumbs of others, or will you be desert hawks, and soar to your own destiny?”

Isak, the pharmacist’s son, was a slight, studious boy with pencilthin limbs. Lola’s mother often opined that for all his learning, the pharmacist didn’t have the first idea about how to properly feed a growing child. But of all the young people in the hall, Isak alone fidgeted impatiently during Mordechai’s rhetorical flight. Mordechai noticed and turned the full force of his warmth upon him. “What is it, Isak? Do you have a view to share with us?”

Isak pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Maybe what you say is true for Jews in Germany. We all hear troubling news from there. But not here. Anti-Semitism has never been part of our lives in Sarajevo. Look where the synagogue is: between the mosque and the Orthodox church. I’m sorry, but Palestine is the Arabs’ home, not yours. Certainly not mine. We are Europeans. Why turn our backs on a country that has offered us prosperity and education, in order to become a peasant among people who don’t want us?”

“So, you are happy to be a pigeon?” Mordechai said this with a smile, but his intention to belittle Isak was clear, even to Lola. Isak pinched the bridge of his nose and scratched his head.

“Maybe so. But at least the pigeon does no harm. The hawk lives at the expense of the other creatures that dwell in the desert.”

Lola had listened to the two of them argue until her head ached. She had no idea who was right. She turned over on the thin mattress and tried to quiet her mind. She had to get to sleep, otherwise she’d nod off over her tasks the next day, and her father would want to know why. Lola worked in the laundry with her mother, Rashela. If she was tired, it was a chore to walk the streets of the city with her heavy baskets, delivering fresh starched linens and picking up soiled clothes. The warm, moist steam would make her drowsy when she was supposed to be tending the copper. Her mother would find her, slumped in a corner, as the water cooled and a greasy scum congealed on the surface.

Lujo, her father, was not a harsh man, but he was a strict and practical one. At first, he had allowed her to go to the Young Guardians, Hashomer Haza’ir in Hebrew, after her work was done. His friend Mosa, the custodian at the Jewish community center, had spoken in favor of the group, saying it was a harmless and wholesome youth organization, like the Gentiles’ Scouts. But then Lola had fallen asleep and let the fire that heated the copper go out. Her mother had scolded, and her father had asked why. When he learned that there was a dance, the hora, which boys and girls did together, he’d banned her from attending any more meetings. “You are only fifteen, daughter. When you are a little older, we will find a nice fiancé to partner with you, and then you may dance.”

She had pleaded, saying she would sit down during the dances. “There are things I can learn there,” she said.

“Things!” said Lujo contemptuously. “Things that will help you earn bread for your family? No? I did not think so. Wild ideas. Communistic ideas, from what I have heard. Ideas that are banned in our country and will get you into trouble you don’t need. And a dead language that no one speaks, save for a handful of old men in the synagogue. Really, I don’t know what Mosa was thinking. I will look to your honor, even if others forget the value of these things. Hiking, on Sunday, I don’t mind it, if your mother has no chores for you. But from now on you spend your evenings at home.”

From then on, in fact, Lola had begun to lead an exhausting double life. Hashomer met two nights a week. On those nights, she went to bed early, with her little sister. Sometimes, when she had worked very hard, it took an immense effort of will to keep herself awake, listening to the gentle, even breathing of Dora’s little body next to her. But mostly her anticipation made it easy to feign sleep until her parents’ snores told her it was safe to leave. Then she would creep out, scrambling into her clothes on the landing and hoping no neighbors came out of their doors to notice.

On the evening that Mordechai told the group he was leaving, Lola at first did not understand him. “I am going home,” he said. Lola thought he meant Travnik. Then she realized he was taking a freighter back to Palestine, and that she would never see him again. He invited everyone to come to the train station on the day of his departure, to see him off. Then he announced that Avram, an apprentice printer, had decided to go with him.

“He is the first. I hope many of you will follow.” He glanced at Lola, and it seemed to her that his gaze lingered. “Whenever you come home, we will be there to welcome you.”

The day that Mordecai and Avram were to leave, Lola longed to go to the train station, but her mother had an immense amount of laundry to do. Rashela toiled with the heavy iron while Lola took her accustomed place at the copper and the mangle. At the hour when Mordechai’s train was to depart for the coast, Lola stared at the gray walls of the laundry, watching the steam condense and trickle down the cold stone. The smell of mold filled her nostrils. She tried to imagine the hard white sunlight that Mordechai had described, silvering the leaves of olive trees, and the scent of orange blossoms blooming in the stone-walled gardens of Jerusalem.

The leader who took Mordechai’s place, a young man named Samuel from Novi Sad, was a competent teacher of outdoor skills, but lacked the charisma that had kept Lola awake on meeting nights. Now, more often than not, she fell asleep herself as she waited for her exhausted parents to drop off. She would wake to the khoja’s dawn prayer call, rallying their Muslim neighbors to devotions. She would realize she had missed a meeting and feel only slight regret.

Other boys and girls did follow Avram and Mordechai to Palestine, each time with a big send-off at the railway station. Occasionally they would write back to the group. Always there was a sameness to the reports; the work was hard, but the land was worth any effort, and to be a Jew building a Jewish land was what mattered most in the world. Lola sometimes wondered about these letters. Surely someone was homesick? Surely such a life could not agree with everyone who tried it? But it seemed as if those who left all became one person, speaking with the same monotonous voice.

The tempo of departures picked up as the news from Germany worsened. The annexation of Austria put the Reich hard up against their borders. But life at the community center went on as usual, the old people meeting for coffee and gossip, the religious for their Oneg Shabbat on Friday night. There was no sense of danger, even when the government turned a blind eye to the fascist gangs who began to roam the streets, harassing anyone they knew to be a Jew, getting into fistfights with the Gypsies. “They are just louts.” Lujo shrugged. “Every community has its louts, even ours. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Sometimes, when Lola was collecting soiled laundry from an apartment in the affluent part of the city, she would catch sight of Isak, always with a heavy book bag slung across his shoulder. He was at the university now, studying chemistry as his father had. Lola wanted to ask him what he thought of the louts, and whether it worried him that France had fallen. But she was embarrassed by the basket of sour-smelling garments she carried. And she wasn’t sure she knew enough to ask the questions in a way that would not disclose her as a fool.

When Stela Kamal heard a light knock on the door of her apartment, she reached up to the crown of her head and pulled down her lace veil before she went to answer it. She had been in Sarajevo for a little more than a year, but she still clung to the more conservative ways of Priština, where no traditional Muslim family allowed its women to show their faces to a strange man.

That afternoon, though, her caller was not a man; just the laundress her husband had arranged. Stela felt sorry for the young girl. On her back she carried a wicker pannier laden with pressed laundry. Over the shoulder straps for this, she had slung calico bags full of soiled items. She looked tired and chilled. Stela offered her a hot drink.

At first, Lola could not understand Stela’s Albanian accent. Stela threw back the fine piece of lace that covered her face and repeated her offer, miming the pouring of coffee from a džezva. Lola accepted gladly; it was so cold outside, and she had walked miles. Stela beckoned her into the apartment and went to the mangala, where the embers were still hot. She flung the coffee grounds into the džezva and let it boil up once, twice.

The rich aroma made Lola’s mouth water. She stared around her. She had never seen so many books. The apartment’s walls were lined with them. It wasn’t a large apartment, but everything in it had an easy grace, as if it had always been there. Low wooden tables, inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the Turkish style, had yet more books open upon them. Celims in muted colors warmed the gleaming waxed floors. The mangala was very old, the copper burnished, the hemispherical cover decorated with crescents and stars.

Stela turned and handed Lola a delicate porcelain fildžan, also with a crescent and star glazed into the bottom of the cup. Stela raised the džezva high and poured the hot coffee in a long dark thread. Lola wrapped her fingers around the handleless cup and felt the fragrant steam caress her face. As she sipped the strong coffee, she looked over the rim of the cup at the young Muslim woman. Even at home, Stela’s hair was tied back beneath spotless white silk, her lace veil lying prettily over it, ready to be drawn down again if modesty required. The young woman was very beautiful, with warm dark eyes and creamy skin. Lola registered, with surprise, that the two of them were probably around the same age. She felt a stab of envy. Stela’s hands, holding the džezva, were smooth and pale, not red and scaly like Lola’s. How nice to have such an easy life, in such a fine apartment, with someone else to do the irksome chores.

Then Lola noticed a silver-framed photograph of the young woman on what must have been her wedding day, although her expression betrayed no joy. The man beside her was tall and distinguished, wearing a fez and a long dark frock coat. But he looked more than twice her age. An arranged marriage, probably. Lola had heard that Albanian tradition required brides to stand stock-still from dawn to dusk on their wedding day, forbidden from taking any part in the celebration. Even a smile was considered immodest and reprehensible. Lola, accustomed to wild rejoicing even at the most observant Jewish weddings, couldn’t imagine such a thing. She wondered if it was true, or just one of the rumors that different communities made up about one another. Gazing at the picture, her envy waned. She, at least, would marry someone young and strong. Like Mordechai.

Stela saw Lola scrutinizing the photograph. “That is my husband, Serif effendi Kamal,” she said. She was smiling now, and slightly flushed. “Do you know him? Most people in Sarajevo seem to.” Lola shook her head. There was no point of intersection between her poor, unlettered family and the Kamals, a large and influential clan of Muslim alims, or intellectuals. The Kamals had given Bosnia many muftis, the highest religious office in a province.

Serif Kamal had studied theology at the university in Istanbul and Oriental languages at the Sorbonne in Paris. He had been a professor and the senior official in the ministry of religious affairs before becoming chief librarian at the National Museum. He spoke ten languages and had written scholarly books on history and architecture, although his specialty was the study of ancient manuscripts. His intellectual passion was the literature that had developed at Sarajevo’s cultural crossroads: lyric poetry written by Muslim Slavs in classical Arabic, yet following the forms of Petrarchan sonnets that had been carried inland from Diocletian’s court on the Dalmatian coast.

Serif had postponed marriage while he pursued his studies, and had finally taken a wife simply to silence all those in his circle who nagged him to do so. He had been visiting Stela’s father, who had taught him the Albanian language. His old professor had begun to rib him about his extended bachelorhood. Flippantly, Serif had said he would marry, but only if his friend would give him one of his daughters. The next thing Serif knew, he had a bride. More than a year later, he was still surprised at how happy he was with this sweet young presence in his life. Especially since she had just confided that she was pregnant.

Stela had carefully folded the soiled sheets and garments. She handed them to Lola almost diffidently. She had always done her own laundry. She expected to. But with the baby coming, Serif had insisted on lessening her household chores.

Lola picked up the basket, thanked Stela for the coffee, and went on her way.

On an April morning, when the first snowmelt brought grassy scents from the mountains, the Luftwaffe sent wave after wave of Stuka dive-bombers to raid Belgrade. Armies from four hostile nations poured across the borders. It took less than two weeks for the Yugoslav army to surrender. Even before that, Germany had declared Sarajevo part of a new state. “This is now the Ustashe and Independent State of Croatia,” the Nazi-appointed leader declared. “It must be cleansed of Serbs and Jews. There is no room for any of them here. Not a stone upon a stone will remain of what once belonged to them.”

On April 16, the Germans marched into Sarajevo and for the next two days, they rampaged through the Jewish quarter. Anything of value was looted. Fires burned unchecked in the old synagogues. Anti-Jewish laws for the “protection of Aryan blood and the honor of the Croatian people” meant that Lola’s father, Lujo, no longer had a job at the finance ministry. Instead, he was forced into a work brigade with other Jewish men, even professionals like Isak’s father, the pharmacist. All were forced to wear a yellow star. Lola’s little sister, Dora, was expelled from school. The family, always poor, now had to rely on the few coins that Lola and Rashela could earn.

Stela Kamal was troubled. Her husband, usually so courteous, so concerned about her condition, had hardly exchanged six words with her in two days. He had returned home late from the museum, barely touched his dinner, and shut himself up in his study. In the morning he had said little at breakfast, and left early. When Stela went to tidy the study, she found his desk strewn with pages, some heavily corrected with many crossed-out sentences, some balled up and tossed onto the floor.

Serif usually worked calmly. His desk was always impeccably neat and organized. Almost guiltily, Stela smoothed out one of the discarded sheets. “Nazi Germany is a kleptocracy,” she read. She did not know the word. “Museums have a duty to resist the plundering of cultural heritage. The losses in France and Poland could have been stanched had not museum directors offered up their skill and expertise to facilitate German looting. Instead, to our shame, we are become one of the most Nazified professions in Europe.…” There was nothing else on the sheet. She picked up another crumpled ball. This one had a heading, heavily underlined: ANTI-SEMITISM IS FOREIGN TO THE MUSLIMS OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA. The page seemed to be an article, or some kind of open letter, decrying the passage of anti-Jewish laws. There was much crossing out, but Stela could read parts of sentences: “…only a lightning rod used to draw the people’s attention away from their real problems.”…“Provide help to the poor among the Jewish population, whose number is much higher than commonly estimated.…”

Stela crumpled the paper and swept it into a rubbish container. She pressed her knuckles into the small of her back, which was aching a little. She had never doubted that her husband was the wisest of men. She did not doubt it now. But his silences, the crumpled pages, the alarming sentences…She thought about speaking to him of these things. All day, she rehearsed what she might say. But when he came home, she poured his coffee from the džezva and said nothing.

After a few weeks, the arrests began. In early summer, Lujo was ordered to report for transport to a labor camp. Rashela wept and pleaded with him not to answer the summons, to flee the city, but Lujo said that he was strong, and a good worker, and would manage. He took his wife’s chin in his hand. “Better this way. The war cannot last forever. If I run away, they will come for you.” Never a demonstrative man, he kissed her, long and tenderly, and climbed aboard the truck.

Lujo did not know that there were no labor camps, only places of starvation and torture. Before the end of the year, he would be marched into the hills of Herzegovina, where the limestone is eaten away in a maze of wormholes. Rivers vanish there, running through the underground caverns, suddenly bubbling up again many miles distant. With other bruised and emaciated men—Jews, Gypsies, Serbs—Lujo stood at the lip of a deep cave whose floor he could not see. A Ustasha guard slashed his hamstrings and pushed him into the abyss.

They came for Rashela when Lola was out delivering fresh-pressed laundry. The soldiers had lists of all the Jewish women whose husbands and sons had already been deported. They herded them into trucks and deposited them at the ruined synagogue.

Lola returned to find her mother and sister gone, the door wide open, their few possessions tossed around in a vain search for something of value. She ran to her aunt’s flat, a few streets away, and knocked until her knuckles ached. A Muslim neighbor, a kindly woman who still wore the traditional chador, opened her door and took Lola inside. The woman handed her water and told her what had happened.

Lola fought back the panic that emptied her mind. She had to think. What should she do? What could she do? The only single idea that made its way through her confusion was that she needed to find them. She turned to go. The neighbor laid a hand on her arm. “You will be recognized out there. Take this.” She handed Lola a chador. Lola flung the cloak around her and set off for the synagogue. The front door, splintered by hatchets, hung loose on broken hinges. There were guards there, so Lola crept around to the side of the building, to the small room where the siddurim were stored. The window had been shattered. Lola took off the chador and wrapped it around her hand. She worked a piece of jagged glass loose from its lead surround, reached in, and slipped the catch. The frame, empty of its glass, tilted outward. She pulled herself up to the sill. The small room was in disarray, the shelves pulled down and the prayer books they had contained shredded all over the floor. There was a foul smell. Someone had defecated on the pages.

With the strong arms formed by lifting wet laundry, Lola hoisted her own weight till her ribs rested across the sill. Kicking, scrambling, the lead edge scraping through her clothes, she wriggled her way through the opening and dropped as gently as she could to the floor. Then she cracked open the heavy, polished-wood door. A pungent stink, of fear and sweat, burned paper and sour urine, filled the desecrated sanctuary. The ark that had housed the community’s ancient Torah, carried safely from Spain so many centuries ago, gaped open, blackened by flame. The damaged pews and ash-filled aisles were packed with distraught women, old, young, some trying to comfort infants whose cries were amplified by the room’s high stone dome. Others hunched over, head in hands. Lola eased her way slowly through the crowd, trying not to call attention to herself. Her mother, her little sister, and her aunt were huddled together in a corner. She came up behind her mother and laid a hand gently on her shoulder.

Rashela, thinking Lola had been caught, let out a cry.

Lola hushed her and spoke urgently. “There’s a way out, through a window. I got in that way; we can all escape.”

Lola’s aunt Rena lifted her fat arms and made a gesture of defeat that took in her wide body. “Not me, my darling girl. My heart’s not good. I’ve got no breath. I’m not going anywhere.”

Lola, frantic, knew that her mother would not abandon this beloved older sister. “I can help you,” she pleaded. “Please, let’s try.”

Her mother’s face, always lined and careworn, seemed to have fallen suddenly into the deep, folded creases of a much older woman. She shook her head. “Lola, they have lists. They would miss us when they load the trucks. And anyway, where would we go?”

“We can go to the mountains,” Lola said. “I know the ways, there are caves where we can shelter. We’ll get to the Muslim villages. They’ll help us, see if they won’t.…”

“Lola, the Muslims were here at the synagogue, too. They burned and broke, looted and cheered just like the Ustashe.”

“Just a few of them, just the louts—”

“Lola, darling, I know you mean well, but Rena is ill, and Dora is too little.”

“But we can do it. Believe me, I know the mountains, I—”

Her mother laid her hand heavily on Lola’s arm.

“I know you do. All those nights at Hashomer, I should hope they taught you something.” Lola stared at her mother. “Did you really think I was asleep? No. I wanted you to go. I’m not like your father, worried about your honor. I know you are a modest girl. But now I want you to go away from this place. Yes,” she said firmly, as Lola shook her head. “I am your mother, and in this you must obey me. You go. My place is here with Dora and my sister.”

“Please, Mamma, please let me at least take Dora.”

Her mother shook her head. She was struggling hard to contain tears. Her skin had turned blotchy with the effort. “Alone, you have the best chance. She’d never keep up with you.”

“I can carry her.…”

Dora, clinging to her mother, looked from one to the other of the people she most loved, and, realizing that the result of the argument would be the loss of one of them, began to wail.

Rashela patted her, looking around, hoping the outburst wasn’t drawing the guards’ attention. “After the war, we’ll all find each other.” She reached both hands up to Lola’s face and stroked her cheeks. “Go now. Stay alive.”

Lola dragged her hands through her hair, pulling hard at the tangles until she hurt herself. She threw her arms around her mother and her sister and hugged them hard. She kissed her aunt. Then she turned away and stumbled through the press of sagging bodies, rubbing her eyes with the fleshy part of her hand. When she reached the door to the storeroom, she waited until the guards’ eyes were elsewhere before she opened the door and slipped inside. She rested her back against the door, wiping her nose on her sleeve. As she dropped her arm, a small white hand reached out and grabbed it. The hand belonged to a girl with an intense elfin face, eyes huge behind thick glasses and finger planted firmly on lips. She pulled Lola down, hard, then pointed at the window. Lola saw the shape of a German helmet, the muzzle of a rifle, passing by the broken window.

“I know who you are,” whispered the girl, who looked about nine or ten years old. “You went to Hashomer with my brother, Isak. I was going to go this year.…”

“Where is Isak?” Lola knew he’d been expelled from the university. “Was he taken for forced labor?”

The girl shook her head. “They got Father, but Isak is with the Partisans. There are others from your group, too. Maks, Zlata, Oskar…maybe even more now. Isak would not take me with them because I am too young. I told him I can carry messages, I can spy. But he wouldn’t listen. He told me it would be safer to stay with the neighbors. But he was wrong. He must take me now, because here is nothing but death.”

Lola winced. No child her age should talk like that. But the child was right. Lola had seen death in the faces of those she loved.

Lola regarded Isak’s little sister. A waif, not much bigger than Dora. Yet her face was animated by the same worried intensity as her brother’s. “I don’t know,” Lola said. “It’s going to be hard walking, and dangerous, getting out of the city.… I think your brother…”

“If you want to know where he is, then you have to take me. Otherwise I’m not telling. And anyway, I have this.”

The child reached under her pinafore and pulled out a German Luger. Lola was astonished.

“Where did you get that?”

“Stole it.”

“How?”

“When they came to drag us out of the house, I made myself vomit on the soldier who was carrying me to the truck. I had been eating fish stew, so it was disgusting. He dropped me and cursed. While he was trying to clean the sick off himself, I snatched this from his holster and I ran. I was hiding in that building where your aunt lives. I followed you here. I know where my brother is, but I don’t know how to get there. Will you take me or not?”

Lola knew this stubborn, wily child would not be tricked or persuaded into telling her where Isak and the others were. Like it or not, they needed each other. As soon as the light began to fade, they scrambled out the window and melted away down the city’s back alleys.

For two days, Lola and Ina slept in caves and hid in barns, stole eggs and slurped them raw from the shells, until they reached Partisan territory. Isak had given Ina the name of a farmer, an elderly man with a weathered face and huge ropy hands.

He asked no questions. He opened the door to the cottage and ushered them inside. His wife, tutting and fussing about their matted hair and filthy faces, boiled water in a big black kettle and poured a bowl for each of them to wash. She then set a rich lamb casserole with potatoes and carrots before them, the first real meal they’d had since leaving the city. She treated their blistered feet with salves and put them both to bed for two days before allowing her husband to lead them on to the Partisans’ mountain camp.

Lola was glad of the food and rest, as they made an exhausting climb up near-vertical rock faces. As she climbed, the reality of her predicament began to sink in. She had thought only of getting out of the city. She did not feel brave enough to be a resistance fighter. What could a laundress do that would be useful? There had been rumors of Partisan attacks on railway lines and bridges, and terrible reports about wounded Partisans captured by Nazis. One story told how the wounded men had been laid out on the road while the Germans drove a truck over and back across their bodies. Lola clutched the scree and pulled herself up the rock face, her mind filled with these frightful stories.

When they reached a wide ridgeline where the ground flattened and grasses and moss grew in mounds like cushions, she threw herself down, exhausted. Suddenly, a figure in gray emerged from a copse of low trees ahead of them. The uniform was German. The farmer fell prone on the ground and aimed his shotgun. Then he laughed, scrambled to his feet, and embraced the youth.

“Maks!” cried Ina. She bolted toward the youth, and he scooped her into his arms. Maks was one of Isak’s best friends. Ina fingered the place where the Nazi insignia had been torn off his uniform. In its place was a crudely sewn five-pointed star, the emblem of the resistance.

“Hello, little sister of Isak. Hello, Lola. So, are you our new partisankas?” Maks waited while the girls thanked the farmer and made their farewells. Then he led them along the ridgeline toward a one-story building of heavy beams, lathe, and plaster. Lola recognized Oskar, sitting in the warm grass with his back against the wall. There were two boys she did not know lounging alongside him. All were busy picking lice off their jackets, two of which were German uniforms and one sewn from a piece of gray blanket.

Maks led Lola and Ina past the youths and through the pigsty that formed the entryway to the building’s only door. The door opened onto the kitchen. A long, thatched roof over the front of the house made space in the peak for a loft that was reached by a ladder. “Good place to sleep,” said Maks. “Warm. A bit smoky.” The kitchen floor was of rough-trodden dirt, covered in part by brick, upon which a banked fire burned. The smoke drifted straight up to the rafters and out through the thatch. There was no chimney. A heavy chain held the cooking pots over the fire. Lola noticed several tubs of water near the door. Beyond were two rooms with planked floors. One contained a pec, or cement oven. Lola saw the poles for drying laundry suspended above it, and nodded approvingly. It would be possible to get washing dry even on wet and snowy days when it couldn’t hang outdoors.

“Welcome to the headquarters of our odred,” Maks said. “We are only sixteen…eighteen now, counting yourselves, if the commander accepts you. Nine of us you know from Hashomer. The rest are local peasants. Good boys and girls, but young. Though not as young as you,” he said, tickling Ina, who giggled. It was the first time Lola had seen the child smile. “Your brother will be surprised. He is second in command of the odred. Our commander, Branko, is from Belgrade. He was a secret Communist Party student leader there.”

“Where are they?” Lola asked. Despite Maks’s friendly manner, the words “if the commander accepts you” filled her with dread. As afraid as she was of being a partisanka, she was even more afraid of not being one; being sent back to the deadly city.

“They’ve gone to collect a mule. Soon enough, we’ll be moving on from here. We’ll need a mule to carry our supplies when we go on missions. Last time, the explosives and detonators we had to carry took up all the room in our packs. We ran out of food halfway to the section of track we were meant to blow up. We were two days without a crust of bread among us.”

Lola’s anxiety deepened as Maks talked. She had no idea about explosives or guns. She looked around the kitchen, and suddenly saw something she did know how to do.

“This water, can I use it?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Maks. “There’s a spring not ten yards from here. Use all you want.”

Lola filled the largest of the blackened kettles and hung it over the fire. She stoked the flames and added some wood. Then she went outside.

She stood before Oskar and the two strange youths. With her toe, she scuffed nervously at the turf.

“What is it, Lola?” Oskar asked.

She felt the blush rising.

“I wonder if you…if you…would give me your jackets and trousers?”

The boys looked at one another and laughed.

“They told us Sarajevan girls were fast!” one said.

“You can’t get rid of lice by picking at them.” Lola spoke in a rush. “They hide in the seams where you can’t find them. If I boil your clothes, it will kill them all. You’ll see.”

The youths, prepared to do anything to end the infernal itching, handed over their garments, ribbing one another and jostling like puppies as they did so.

“Give her your underpants!”

“Never on your life!”

“Well, I am. No bloody good to get rid of the lice in your coat if they’re still running round your balls!”

Later, Lola was hanging the steaming garments—coats, pants, socks, and underpants—over bushes when Branko and Isak emerged from the copse, leading a mule with loaded saddlebags.

Branko was a tall, austere young man with dark hair and eyes that seemed permanently narrowed in an expression of skepticism. Isak came barely up to his shoulders. But Lola noticed, as he swept up his little sister, that he looked stronger across the chest and arms than he had in his student days. His face had lost his indoor pallor and was a little sunburned. He seemed pleased to see Ina; Lola thought his eyes even looked a little moist. But soon he was questioning her closely to make sure she had not made any missteps that would betray their position.

Reassured, he turned to Lola. “Thank you for bringing her. Thank you for coming.”

Lola shrugged, unsure what to say. It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice, but she didn’t want to say that in front of Branko, who would decide if she could stay or not. Little Ina, it seemed, they had a use for. A child could wander inconspicuously around town, observing enemy activities. Lola’s uses were less clear to Branko, and Isak’s introduction didn’t help.

“Lola is a comrade from Hashomer Haza’ir,” Isak told Branko. “She came to all the meetings. Well, almost all. She’s a good hiker.…” Isak, who had never paid the least attention to Lola, ran out of things to say that might recommend her to his commander.

Branko stared at her with his narrowed eyes until Lola felt her face burn. He lifted a corner of the jacket she had spread out to dry. “And a good laundress. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for such luxuries.”

“Lice.” She could barely get the word out. “They carry typhus.” She hurried on, before her nerve failed. “In case of infestation, you…you have to boil all clothes and linens, at least weekly…to…to kill the eggs…otherwise the whole odred could become infected.” Mordechai had taught her that. It was the kind of practical information that Lola could understand and remember.

“So,” said Branko. “You know something.”

“I…I…know how to splint a fracture, and stanch bleeding, and treat bites.… I can learn.…”

“We could use a medic.” Branko continued to regard her, as if by staring alone he could somehow assess her abilities. “Isak has been doing the job, but he has other heavy responsibilities. He could teach you what he knows, maybe. And later, if you do well, we could send you to one of the secret hospitals to learn about treating wounds. I will think about it.”

He turned away then, and Lola let out a breath. Then it seemed he reconsidered and turned his blue stare upon her once again. “Meanwhile, we are in need of a muleteer. How do you feel about mules?”

Lola could hardly say that she didn’t know the front of a mule from the back. But she worried that Isak might find her too stupid to be a medic. She looked at the beast cropping the grass. She walked over and lifted the straps where they cut into his hide. The flesh was raw and weeping.

“I know that you should put a saddlecloth under a heavy load such as this,” she said, “if you want the beast to work for you.” She opened the saddlebags and began removing several of the heaviest packages and carrying them into the house. When Oskar strode over to relieve her of them, she shook her head. “I can manage,” she said. She gave a shy smile. “In my family, I was the mule.”

Everyone laughed then, including Branko. Nothing more was said, but Lola understood that she had been accepted as a member of the odred.

That night, around the pec, as Branko spoke to them of his plans, Lola’s doubts revisited her. Branko was a zealot. In Belgrade he’d been interrogated and beaten for his political activism. He spoke about Tito and Stalin, and about their own duty to follow these two glorious leaders without question. “Your life is not yours,” he said. “Every extra day you are given belongs to those of your families who have died. We will see our country free, or we, too, will die. There is no other future before us.”

Afterward, Lola lay awake on her hard pallet feeling lost and alone, longing for the gentle warmth of Dora’s rounded little back. She did not want to accept the truth of what Branko had said, that her family was dead. Yet the hollow place inside her left little room for hope. The escape from the city and flight through the countryside had filled her mind. But now, as she listened to the snores of strangers, she felt a dull ache. From then on, everything she did would be like moving through a fog.

Over the next few days, Lola considered the mule. She could do very little with him that he had not already decided to do. The first time she was charged with leading him to a drop point to fetch supplies, the mule rebelled against the gradient and pitched his load into a bramble patch. Lola had to brave thorns to retrieve the boxes of ammunition, with Branko’s curses falling on her like blows.

Every day, Lola approached the mule tentatively, smearing salve from their limited supplies on his broken hide while he hawed and brayed as if she were flogging him. Gradually, his raw patches healed. Lola sewed pads to sit under the saddlecloth. She puzzled out an A-frame, made of light willow boughs, that better distributed his loads. On long marches, she asked that the mule be given the opportunity to browse when they came upon a patch of wild anise or clover.

Ill treated, the mule had been ill behaved. But he began to respond to Lola’s attentions, and before long would nuzzle her with wet affection. She came to like stroking his velvety ears. She named him Rid, for the carroty color of his coat, and because red was the signature color of the Partisan movement.

Lola soon realized that for all Branko’s talk, their odred wasn’t much of a fighting force. Apart from Branko himself, only Isak and Maks had Sten guns. The farm lads and lasses had arrived with a shotgun each. The brigade commander promised them more weapons, but after every drop it seemed that some other odred’s needs were more pressing.

Oskar complained of this more than anyone, until Branko told him that if he wanted a gun so badly, he should capture one. “Ina did it, and she’s only ten years old,” he taunted.

That night, Oskar left the campsite. He did not return the next day. Lola overheard Isak rebuking Branko. “You goaded him into undertaking a fool’s errand. How can he capture a weapon when he has no weapon to use?”

Branko shrugged. “Your sister did.” He had taken the Luger from Ina and wore it, with some swagger, on his hip. That night, Lola was helping Zlata gather wood for the cook fire when Oskar came crashing through the trees, the grin on his face wide as a clown’s. Over his shoulder he had a German rifle. He was wearing a baggy gray uniform several sizes too large for him, pant legs rolled up and the waist cinched with twine, and carrying a Nazi-issue rucksack bulging with supplies.

He refused to tell the tale of his triumph until Branko, Isak, and the rest of the odred had gathered. As he handed around slices of German sausage, he told how he had crept into the nearby occupied village and hidden in some roadside bushes. “I had to lie there almost all day, watching the Germans come and go,” he said. “There were always two or three of them together. At last, one comes by, alone. I wait till he passes. I jump out of the bushes, shove a stick between his shoulder blades, and shout, Stoi! The ass actually believed I was armed. He raised his hands. I got his gun, and then I told him to strip to his underpants.”

Everyone was convulsed with laughter at this point, except Branko.

“And then. You shot him.” His voice was flat and cold.

“No, I…I didn’t see the need… He was unarmed…I thought.…”

“And tomorrow, he will be armed again, and the next day, he will kill your comrade. Sentimental fool. You will give the gun to Zlata. She at least will know how to use it.” Lola could not see Oskar’s face in the dark. But she felt his silent anger.

The next night, the odred was required to help secure and clear a drop site. Lola’s job was to keep the mule quiet and calm, ready to carry the arms, radios, or medicines that descended by parachute. While her odred hid just beyond the tree line, Partisans from a different odred, working under the direction of a foreigner—a British spy, someone said—set out brush and tinder for signal fires, laid across a clearing in a prearranged pattern that the Allied pilot would recognize. Lola trembled from fear and cold. She leaned into Rid’s thick pelt, seeking warmth. She had no weapon, aside from the grenade that all Partisans were required to wear on their belts. “If you are about to be captured, you will use it to kill yourself and as many of the enemy as you can take with you,” Branko had said. “On no account be taken alive. Use the grenade, and then there is no way you can be tortured into betrayal.”

The moon had not yet risen. Lola looked up, searching for starlight. But the thick foliage of the trees denied her even that. Her imagination peopled the dark with Germans, waiting to ambush them. The night crawled on. Just before dawn, the wind rose, threshing the pine boughs. Branko decided that the drop must have been aborted, and signaled Lola to prepare to move off. Wearily, stiff from cold, Lola scrambled to her feet and adjusted Rid’s halter.

Just then, the faint buzz of an airplane sounded in the distance. Branko shouted orders to get the fires lit. Isak’s fire wouldn’t catch. He swore as he struggled. Lola did not think of herself as brave. She would not have described the feeling that took hold of her as courage. All she knew was that she could not leave Isak out there, exposed, struggling, alone. She crashed through the trees and into the clearing. She threw herself prone, blowing hard on the stubborn kindling. A flame leaped just as the dark bulk of the Dakota came into view overhead. The pilot made one run, for reconnaissance, and then swept back around, spilling a rain of packages, each with its own small parachute. Partisans emerged from the surrounding forest, running to gather the precious cargo. Lola slashed at the parachute cords and wrapped up the silk, which she would use to make bandages.

The odreds worked fast as the sky began to lighten in the east. By the time dawn broke, Lola was toiling along a narrow ridgeline, a fully laden Rid walking biddably beside her, as they tried to put miles between them and the drop site before the Germans reached the place. Whenever they came to a stream, Branko ordered Maks into the water, to turn over the moss-covered stones. After the odred had crossed, the stones were flipped back as they had been, the moss unbroken by boot prints or mule hoofs.

For seven months, Lola’s odred lived on the move, rarely spending more than a night or two in one campsite, carrying out demolitions of railway tracks or small bridges. On many nights, they were offered the shelter of a farmer’s barn, where they slept in an animal warmth, cushioned by straw. But at other times, they camped in the forest, with only a makeshift blanket of pine needles to keep back the punishing cold. Although never much more than five miles from the nearest enemy post, their odred managed to escape ambushes that claimed other units. Branko preened about this as if it were a product of his own leadership. He expected to be served and deferred to like a general officer. Once, at the end of a grueling march, he lay down against a tree to take his rest while everyone else scrambled to gather dry firewood before the darkness overtook them. Oskar, throwing a heavy bundle of branches down beside the prone Branko, muttered something about Communists supposedly doing away with elitist privilege.

Branko was on his feet in a second. He gripped Oskar by the front of his uniform and slammed him hard against the trunk of a tree.

“You sniveling brats are lucky I was assigned to lead you. You should be thanking me every day for keeping you alive.”

Isak stepped between them and gently pushed Branko away.

“What keeps us alive,” he said quietly, “is not luck, or your excellent leadership. It’s the loyalty of the civilian population. We wouldn’t be able to last five minutes out here without their support.”

For a moment, it seemed that Branko was going to strike Isak. But he retained control of himself somehow, and stepped back, spitting contemptuously on the ground.

Lola had sensed Isak’s growing impatience with Branko. She knew he deplored Branko’s incessant speechifying, late into the night, even after long marches, when the exhausted youths would rather have been sleeping than listening to rambling exegesis on surplus value and false consciousness. Isak would try to bring the political harangues to a close, but many times Branko carried on, oblivious. The greater frustration lay in the difference between Branko’s selfregard and the rather low opinion held of him by the brigade commander in their region. Branko promised better weapons, yet they did not materialize. He told Lola that she would be assigned to a field hospital for training, but this never occurred.

Still, she felt useful in her role as muleteer, and even Branko, who was stinting with praise, from time to time commended her. As winter pressed in upon them, most fell ill. The hacking of their wet coughs became the morning reveille. Lola begged onions from the farmers to make poultices. Isak showed her how to compound the ingredients for expectorants, which she administered diligently. She proposed a redistribution of rations so that those who were recuperating from illness could receive more. Branko promised to move them into winter quarters, but weeks passed and the odred remained camped out on the unforgiving mountains. Numbers dwindled. Zlata, ill for weeks with a violent chest infection, was taken in by a local peasant family and died there, in a warm bed, at least. Oskar, tired of the hardships and Branko’s constant ill will, deserted in the night, taking Slava, one of the farm girls, with him.

Lola worried about Ina. The child had the same hacking cough as most of the odred. But when she raised the subject of finding a winter haven for her with Isak, he dismissed it. “For one thing, she would not go. For another, I would not ask her. I promised her I’d never leave her again. It’s that simple.”

On a blizzarding day in early March, Milovan, the regional brigade commander, summoned the remnant odred to a meeting. As the thin, sickly teenagers gathered around him, he began his address. Tito, Milovan said, had a new vision for his army. It was to be consolidated into tough, professional units that would engage the Germans directly. The enemy forces were to be pushed back to the cities, their lines disrupted, until Partisan control of the countryside was achieved.

Lola, her head muffled in a scarf and her cap pulled down tight over her ears, at first thought she had mistaken what the colonel said next. But the dismay on others’ faces confirmed that what she thought she had heard was true. Their odred was to be disbanded, effective immediately. “Marshal Tito thanks you for your service, and it will be remembered on the glorious day of victory. Now, those of you who have arms, please stack them for collection. You, mule girl. Take charge of loading them. We will leave now. You will wait till nightfall before moving out.”

Everyone looked at Branko, waiting for him to say something. But Branko, his head bowed against the blowing snow, said nothing. It was Isak who was left to protest.

“Sir? May I ask where you propose we go?”

“You may go home.”

“Home? What home?” Isak was shouting now. “None of us has a home anymore. Most of our families have been murdered. We, all of us, are outlaws. You can’t seriously expect us to walk unarmed into the hands of the Ustashe?” He turned to Branko. “Tell him, damn it!”

Branko raised his head and stared coldly at Isak. “You heard the colonel. Marshal Tito has said there is no longer any place for ragtag bands of children wielding sticks and firecrackers. We are a professional army now.”

“Oh, I see!” Isak’s voice oozed contempt. “You may keep your gun—the gun my little sister, a ‘ragtag child,’ got for you. And the rest of us get a death sentence!”

“Silence!” Milovan raised his gloved hand. “Obey your orders, and your service will be rewarded in the future. Disobey, and you will be shot.”

Lola, numb and confused, loaded Rid as she had been commanded. When the few rifles and the bag of grenades had been secured, she took the mule’s soft muzzle between her two hands and looked into his eyes. “Be safe, friend,” she whispered. “You, at least, they have a use for. May they treat you with more loyalty and care than they are showing to us.” She handed the halter to Milovan’s aide and gave him a sack in which she kept a precious ration of oats. The aide looked inside the bag, and from his expression, Lola realized Rid would be lucky to see the oats again before they warmed the aide’s belly. So she thrust her gloved hands into the sack and pulled up two generous handfuls. Rid’s wet breath warmed her hands for a moment. Before he had disappeared into the swirling snow, his saliva had frozen solid on the darned wool. Branko, she noted, did not look back.

The rest of the group gathered around Isak, waiting for him to offer them a plan. “I think we will do best in pairs or small groups,” he said. His own intention was to head for liberated territory. Lola sat in silence as the discussion passed from one to another around the fire. Some aimed to go south, into Italian-occupied areas. Others said they would seek out extended family members. Lola had no one, and the thought of an uncertain journey to a strange southern town frightened her. She waited for someone to ask her about her plans, to offer her a place at their side. But no one said anything at all. It was as if she had already ceased to exist. When she got up and left the circle, no one said good night.

Lola found her place in a corner of the clearing and tossed there, restless. She had piled her few belongings into a rucksack and had tied up her feet in layers of cloth she’d saved for bandages. She was lying, awake but with her eyes closed, when she felt Ina’s fierce brown gaze. The child was wrapped in her blanket as if it were a cocoon. She had a woolen hat pulled tight over her brow, so that her eyes were all that was visible.

Lola did not realize she had drifted to sleep until she felt Ina’s small hand shaking her. It was still dark, but Ina and Isak were up, rucksacks packed. Ina put a hand on her lips to urge silence and then extended a hand to pull Lola to her feet. Scrambling, she rolled her blanket and pushed it into the pack with her few supplies, and trailed after Ina and her brother.

The details of the days and nights that followed would return to Lola in her dreams. But in her waking memory, they remained a blur of pain and fear. The three moved in the dark and hid during the short daylight hours, snatching restless sleep when they could find a barn or a haystack to shelter them, waking in fear to the sound of a dog barking, which could mean a German patrol. On the fourth night, Ina’s fever rose. Isak had to carry her, shivering, sweating, murmuring in her delirium. On the fifth night, the temperature plunged. Isak had given his socks to Ina, and wrapped her in his coat, in a vain attempt to stop her wracking shivers. Halfway through the night march, just after they had forded an ice-covered river, he stopped and sank down onto the frozen pine needles.

“What is it?” Lola whispered.

“My foot. I can’t feel it,” Isak said. “The ice—there was a thin place. My foot went through. It got wet and now it’s frozen. I can’t walk anymore.”

“We can’t stop here,” Lola said. “We’ve got to find some shelter.”

“You go. I can’t.”

“Let me see.” Lola shone her torch beam on the torn, gaping leather of Isak’s boot. The exposed flesh was black with frostbite. The foot had been damaged long before the accident in the stream. She placed her gloved hands over the foot to try to warm it. But it was no good. The toes were frozen solid, brittle as twigs. The slightest pressure would snap them right off. Lola took her own coat off and laid it on the ground. She lifted Ina and placed her on it. The child’s breath was shallow and irregular. Lola felt for her pulse and could not find it.

“Lola,” Isak said. “I can’t walk anymore, and Ina is dying. You have to go on alone.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said.

“Why not?” said Isak. “I would have left you.”

“Maybe so.” She got up and began wrenching frozen sticks from the hard ground.

“A fire’s too dangerous,” Isak said. “And besides, you won’t be able to light it with this frozen wood.”

Lola felt exasperation, even anger, rise within her.

“You can’t just give up,” she said.

Isak made no answer. With difficulty, he struggled to his hands and knees, and then somehow stood.

“Your foot,” said Lola.

“It does not have to carry me far.”

Lola, confused, reached to pick up Ina. Isak gently pushed her aside.

“No,” he said. “She comes with me.”

He took the child, so thin now she weighed almost nothing. But instead of going on in the direction they’d been walking, he turned and hobbled back toward the river.

“Isak!”

He did not turn. Embracing his little sister, he stepped off the bank, onto the ice. He walked out into the center, where the ice was thin. His sister’s head lay on his shoulder. They stood there for a moment, as the ice groaned and cracked. Then it gave way.

Lola reached Sarajevo just as the first light spilled over the mountain ridges and silvered the rain-slicked alleys. Knowing she could not make it alone all the way to the liberated territory, she had turned back toward the city. She made her way down familiar streets, sidling along the line of the buildings, seeking whatever small protection they afforded from the drizzling rain and from unfriendly eyes. She smelled the familiar city scents of wet pavement, rotting garbage, and burning coal. Starving, soaked, and in despair, she walked without any clear destination until she found herself at the steps of the finance ministry, where her father had worked. The building was still and deserted. Lola climbed the broad staircase. She ran a hand across the dark bas-relief that framed the entrace, and sank down onto her haunches in the doorway. She watched the raindrops hit the stairs, each drop sending out concentric circles that linked for a moment and then dissolved. In the mountains, she had pushed the memories of her family to the back of her mind, afraid that if she opened the door to grief, she would be unable to close it. Here, memories of her father pressed upon her. She wished to be a child again, protected, safe.

She must have dozed for a few minutes. Footsteps, from behind the heavy door, woke her. She shrank herself into the shadows, uncertain whether to run or stay. The bolts slid back with a whine of unoiled metal, and a man in workers’ overalls emerged, his muffler high around his chin.

He had not yet seen her.

She uttered the traditional words of greeting. “May God save us.”

The man turned, startled. His watery blue eyes widened when her saw the dripping, wraithlike figure cowering in the shadows. He did not recognize her, changed as she was by her months of mountain hardship. But she knew him. He was Sava, a kindly old man who had worked beside her father. She said his name, and then her own.

As he realized who she was, he reached down and lifted her to him in an embrace. Relief at his kindness overwhelmed her and she began to weep. Sava scanned the street to be sure that no one observed them. With his arm still wrapped around her shaking shoulders, he steered her inside, closed the door, and bolted it again.

He took her to the janitors’ dressing room and wrapped her in his own coat. He poured fresh coffee from the džezva. When she could find her voice, she told him of her exile from the Partisan unit. When she came to Ina’s death she could not go on. Sava placed his arm around her shoulders and rocked her gently.

“Can you help me,” she said at last. “If not, then please, deliver me to the Ustashe now, because I can’t run anymore.”

Sava regarded her for a moment without saying anything. Then he rose and took her hand. He led her out of the ministry, locking the door behind him. They walked in silence for one block, two. When they reached the National Museum, Sava led her to the porters’ entrance and motioned her to wait on a bench inside an alcove near the door.

He was gone a long time. Lola could hear people beginning to move around the building. She began to wonder if Sava had deserted her there. But exhaustion and grief had made her apathetic. She could no longer take any action to save herself. So she sat and she waited.

When Sava reappeared, there was a tall gentleman beside him. The man was middle-aged and very well dressed, with a crimson fez set atop dark hair streaked with silver. There was something a little familiar about him, but Lola could not think where they might have met. Sava took her hand and pressed it reassuringly. Then he was gone. The tall man beckoned Lola to follow him.

They left the building. He ushered her into the backseat of a small car, signaling that she should lie down on the floor. Only when he had started the motor and pulled out from the curb did he speak. His accent was refined, his voice gentle as he questioned her about where she had been and what she had done.

They had not driven any great distance when he stopped the car and got out, telling Lola to stay where she was. He was gone just a few minutes. When he came back, he handed Lola a chador. Then, he motioned her urgently to stay down.

“May God save us, effendi!”

He exchanged pleasantries with the passing neighbor, pretending to search for something in the car’s trunk. When the man turned the corner, he opened the rear door and gestured for Lola to follow. She pulled the chador across her face and kept her eyes down, as she had seen the modest Muslim women do. Inside the building, he rapped sharply on the door, and it opened at once.

His wife was standing just inside, waiting. Lola looked up and recognized her. It was the young wife who had given her coffee when she came to collect the laundry. Stela showed no sign of remembering Lola, which was unsurprising given the great change in her appearance. The year had aged her. She was gaunt and sinewy, her hair cropped short like a boy’s.

Stela looked anxiously from Lola’s haggard face to her husband’s concerned one. He spoke to her in Albanian. Lola had no idea what was said, but she saw Stela’s eyes widen. He continued speaking, gently but urgently. Stela’s eyes filled, but she wiped them with a lace handkerchief and turned to Lola.

“You are welcome in our home,” she said. “My husband tells me you have suffered very much. Come now and wash, eat, rest. Later, when you have slept, we will talk about how best to keep you safe.” Serif looked at his wife with a gentle expression of mingled tenderness and pride. Lola saw the glance, and how Stela colored as she returned it. To be loved like that, she thought, would be something indeed.

“I must return to the museum now,” he said. “I will see you this evening. My wife will take good care of you.”

The feel of hot water and the fragrant scent of soap were luxuries that, to Lola, seemed to belong to another lifetime. Stela gave her steaming soup and fresh bread, and Lola tried her best to eat it slowly, although in her extreme hunger she could have picked up the bowl in both hands and drained it. When she was done, Stela led her to a small alcove room. There was a baby’s crib, and in it an infant napped. “This is my son, Habib, born last autumn,” she said. She indicated a low sofa along the wall. “This can be your room, too.” Lola lay down, and even before Stela returned with a quilt, she had fallen into an exhausted sleep.

When she woke, it was like swimming up through deep water. The crib beside her was empty. She could hear soft voices, one anxious, one reassuring. Then a baby’s gentle mewling, quickly quieted. Lola saw that there were clothes set out for her on the bed. They were unfamiliar clothes, a full skirt such as an Albanian Muslim peasant woman might wear, and a large white scarf to cover her cropped hair that could also be pulled across the bridge of her nose to hide the lower part of her face. She knew that her own clothes, Partisan fatigues she’d sewn months ago from a piece of gray blanket, would have to be burned to ashes.

She dressed, struggling a little with the unfamiliar head scarf. When she entered the book-lined sitting room, Serif and Stela were sitting close together, deep in conversation. Serif had his son, a fine little fellow with a shock of dark hair, perched on his knee. His free hand was entwined with his wife’s. They looked up as Lola entered the room, and swiftly withdrew their hands. Lola knew that conservative Muslims felt it was inappropriate even for married couples to express physical affection in the presence of others.

Serif smiled at Lola kindly. “My, you make a fine peasant!” he said. “If you do not mind, the story we will tell to explain your presence here is that you are a maid sent by Stela’s family, to help her with the baby. You will pretend to know no Bosnian language at all, and that way you will not need to speak to anyone. In the presence of others, Stela and I will address you in Albanian. You just need to nod to anything we say. It will be best if you do not leave the apartment at all, so very few people will even know you are here. We will need to give you a Muslim name…does Leila suit you?”

“I don’t deserve this kindness,” she whispered. “That you, Muslims, should help a Jew—”

“Come now!” Serif said, realizing that she was about to cry. “Jews and Muslims are cousins, the descendants of Abraham. Your new name, do you know it means ‘evening’ both in Arabic, the language of our Holy Koran, and also in Hebrew, the language of your Torah?”

“I…I…we never learned Hebrew,” she stammered. “My family wasn’t religious.” Her parents had gone to the Jewish social club, but never to the synagogue. They tried to dress the children in new clothes at Hanukkah, in years when they could afford to, but apart from that, Lola knew very little of her faith.

“Well, it is a very beautiful and fascinating language,” said Serif. “The rabbi and I were collaborating on the translation of some texts, before—well, before this nightmare in which we find ourselves.” He rubbed a hand across his brow and sighed. “He was a good man, a very great scholar, and I mourn him.”

In the weeks that followed, Lola found herself adapting to the rhythms of a very different life. The fear of discovery waned with the passing of time, and before long, the calm, quiet routines of life as the Kamals’ baby nurse seemed more real to her than her former existence as a partisanka. She grew used to Stela’s soft, tentative voice calling her by her new name, Leila. She loved the baby almost from the first time she held him. And she quickly grew fond of Stela, whose physical life in conservative Muslim families had been entirely domestic and private, but whose intellectual horizons, as the daughter and wife of learned people, had been expansive. At first, Lola was a little afraid of Serif, who was almost as old as her father. But his gentle, courtly manners soon put her at her ease. For a while, she couldn’t say what it was about him that was so different from other people she had known. And then one day, as he patiently drew her out on some subject or another, listening to her opinion as if it were worthy of his consideration, and then guiding her subtly to a fuller view of the issue, she realized what the difference was. Serif, the most learned person she had ever met, was also the only person who never let her feel the least bit stupid.

The Kamals’ day was organized around two things, prayer and learning. Five times a day, Stela would stop whatever she was doing, wash herself carefully, and apply perfume. Then she would spread a small silken rug that she kept only for prayer, and make the prostrations and recitations required by her faith. Lola could not understand the words, but she found the sonorous rhymes of the Arabic soothing.

In the evenings, Stela would work a piece of embroidery while Serif read aloud to her. At first, Lola had retired with Habib at that time, but they had invited her to stay and listen if she wished to. She would sit just a little outside of the circle of yellow light thrown by the lamp and hold Habib on her knee, rocking him gently. Serif chose lively histories or beautiful poems to read, and Lola increasingly found herself looking forward to those evening hours. If Habib fussed and she was obliged to leave the room with him, Serif either waited for her return or summarized whatever she had missed.

Sometimes, she woke in the night, sweaty from a dream in which the Germans’ dogs were pursuing her, or in which her little sister cried to her for help as they stumbled through dense woods. In other dreams, Isak and Ina disappeared, again and again, through the cracking ice. When she woke, she would lift Habib from his crib and hug him, taking comfort from the feel of his heavy little body pressed sleepily against her own.

One day, Serif returned early from the library. He did not greet his wife or ask after his son, or even remove his coat at the door, as usual, but went straight into his study.

After a few minutes, he called them. Lola did not usually go into the study. Stela cleaned that room herself. Now, she looked at the books that lined the walls. The volumes were even older and finer than those elsewhere in the apartment; books in a half dozen ancient and modern languages, with exquisite hand-tooled bindings of polished leather. But Serif was cradling a small, simply bound book in his gloved hands. He set it down on the desk in front of him and gazed at it with the same expression he wore when looking at his son.

“General Faber visited the museum today,” he said. Stela gasped and clapped a hand to her head. Faber was the feared commander of the Black Hand units, rumored to be responsible for the massacres of thousands.

“No, no, nothing terrible happened. In fact, I think what happened was very good. Today, with the help of the director, we managed to save one of the museum’s great treasures.”

Serif did not choose to relate a full account of what had taken place at the museum earlier that day. He had not even intended to show them the haggadah. But the presence of the book—in his house, in his hands—somehow overpowered his prudence. He turned the pages so that they could admire the artistry of the book, and told them only that the museum director had trusted it to his care.

Serif’s superior was Dr. Josip Boscovic, a Croatian who managed to negotiate an appearance of complicity with the Ustashe regime in Zagreb while remaining a Sarajevan in his heart. Boscovic had been a curator in old coins before moving into the museum’s administration. He was a popular figure in Sarajevo, a fixture at cultural events. His dark hair was slicked back with a highly scented pomade, and his weekly appointment with his manicurist was an immutable rite.

When Faber sent word that he intended to visit the museum, Boscovic realized that his tightrope walk was about to begin in earnest. His own German was poor, so he called Serif into his office and told him he would be needed to translate. He and Serif had different backgrounds and different intellectual interests. But the two men shared the same fierce commitment to Bosnian history and a love for the diversity that had shaped that history. They also shared an unstated recognition that Faber stood for the extinction of diversity.

“Do you know what he wants?” Serif asked.

“He did not say. But I think we can guess. My colleague in Zagreb told me that they looted the museum’s Judaica collection. You know, and I know, that what we have here is infinitely more important. I believe he wants the haggadah.”

“Josip, we can’t give it to him. He will destroy it, as his men have destroyed every Jewish thing in the city.”

“Serif, friend, what choice have we? He might not destroy it. I have heard talk that Hitler plans a Museum of the Lost Race, to exhibit the finest Jewish objects, after the people themselves are gone.…”

Serif slapped the back of the chair in front of him. “Is there no limit to the depravity of these people?”

“Shhh.” Boscovic raised both hands to quiet his colleague. He dropped his own voice to a whisper. “They were joking about it, in Zagreb last month. They called it Judenforschung ohne Juden—Jewish Studies Without Jews.” Boscovic stepped from behind his desk and laid a hand on Serif’s shoulder. “If you try to hide this book, you put your life at risk.”

Serif regarded him gravely. “What choice have I? I am kustos. Did it survive five hundred years to be destroyed under my stewardship? If you think I can allow such a thing, my friend, you do not know me.”

“Do what you must do then. But be quick, I beg you.”

Serif returned to the library. With hands that shook, he drew out a box he had labeled ARCHIV DER FAMILIE KAPETANOVIC—TüRKISCHE URKUNDEN (Archives of the Kapetanovic Family—Turkish Document)s. He lifted a few old Turkish land title deeds from the top of the box. Underneath were several Hebrew codices. He lifted out the smallest one and tucked it under the belt of his trousers, pulling down his coat so that it concealed the bulge. He returned the Turkish deeds to the box and resealed it.

Faber was a spare man, small boned and not particularly tall. He had a gentle voice that he rarely raised much above a whisper, so that people had to pay close attention when he spoke. His eyes were the cool, opaque green of agate stone, set in skin pale and as translucent as the flesh of a fish.

Josip had risen as an administrator because of a charming manner that sometimes bordered on unctuousness. As he greeted the general with a courtly welcome, no one would have known that the back of his neck prickled with nervous sweat. He excused his poor German, apologizing far more profusely than necessary. Serif appeared at the door then, and Josip introduced him. “My colleague is a great linguist; he puts me to shame.”

Serif approached the general and offered his hand. The general’s grip was unexpectedly soft. Serif felt the flaccid hand lying loosely in his. He was aware of the manuscript shifting slightly against his waist.

Faber did not state the purpose of his visit. In an awkward silence, Josip offered a tour of the collections. As they walked through the vaulted halls, Serif gave an erudite account of the various exhibits while Faber paced behind him, slapping his black leather gloves against a pale white palm and saying nothing.

When they arrived at the library, Faber nodded curtly and spoke for the first time. “Let me see your Jewish manuscripts and incunabula.” Shaking slightly, Serif selected volumes from the shelves and laid them on the long table. There was a mathematics text of Elia Mizrahi’s, a rare edition of a Hebrew-Arabic-Latin vocabulary published in Naples in 1488, a Talmud volume printed in Venice.

Faber’s pale hands caressed each volume. He turned the pages with exquisite care. As he fingered the rarest of the codices, peering at the faded inks and delicate, veined parchments, his expression changed. He moistened his lips. Serif noted that his pupils were dilated, like a lover’s. Serif looked away. He felt a mixture of disgust and violation, as if he were witness to a pornographic spectacle. Finally, Faber closed the binding of the Venetian Talmud and looked up, his brow raised in a question.

“And now, if you please, the haggadah.”

Serif felt a rivulet of scalding sweat run down his back. He turned up his palms and shrugged. “That’s impossible, Herr General,” he said.

Josip’s face, which had been flushed, turned quite pale.

“What do you mean, ‘impossible’?” Faber’s quiet voice was cold.

“What my colleague means,” said Josip, “is that one of your officers came here yesterday and requested the haggadah. He said it was wanted for a particular museum project of the Führer’s. Of course, we were honored to give him our treasure for such a purpose.…”

Serif began to translate Josip’s words, but the general interrupted him.

“Which officer? Give me his name.” He stepped toward Josip. Despite his slight build, the general suddenly seemed to ooze menace. Josip took a step backward, knocking against the bookshelves.

“Sir, he did not give me his name. I…I…did not feel it was my place to ask it.… But if you would come with me to my office, I might be able to give you the paper he signed for me, as a receipt.”

As Serif translated his director’s words, Faber sucked in his breath. “Very well.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door. Josip had only an instant to exchange a glance with Serif. He made it the most eloquent glance of his life. Then, in a voice as calm as a lake on a still day, Serif called after the general. “Please, sir, follow the director. He will lead you to the main stair.”

Serif knew he had very little time. He hoped he had divined the director’s plan correctly. He scribbled out a receipt with the haggadah’s catalog numbers and then, in a different pen, signed below them in an illegible scrawl. He called for a porter and told the man to take the paper to the director’s office. “Use the service stair, and be as quick as you can. Put it on his desk where he can see it the instant he walks in.”

Then, deliberately, forcing himself to slow his movements, he walked to the hat stand and reached for his overcoat and fez. He sauntered out of the library and across the hall to the museum’s main entrance. He made eye contact with Faber’s waiting entourage, nodding in acknowledgment of their presence. Halfway down the museum stair, he stopped to confer with a colleague who was ascending. He passed the large black staff car waiting at the curb. Smiling and greeting his acquaintances, he stopped at his favorite café. He sipped his coffee slowly, as a real Bosnian is supposed to, savoring every drop. Then, and only then, he headed for home.