“It’s risky,” Shlomie said, shaking with cold.
“I don’t care. We can’t keep going. Zofia needs to rest.”
Shlomie nodded. “It’s true. Let’s stop.” He looked at Isaac accusingly out of the corner of his eye.
All day they hid in the forest across the road from the tool shed. Zofia lay in Isaac’s arms. When night fell, he lifted her and carried her like a baby, and the three entered the shed. Even inside Zofia still shivered, and her skin had turned the color of chalk.
There was no light in the shed, no windows. Shlomie tripped over something, but regained his balance without falling.
“It’s better in here than outside, but it’s still so damn cold,” Isaac said, taking off his coat and laying it over Zofia, who was too weak to speak.
“There is nothing else we can do,” Shlomie said. “At least we have some shelter.”
Isaac nodded. “I wonder if there are any extra blankets in the barn.”
“I wouldn’t take them. That would only alert the farmer. In the morning you and I will go to a neighboring farm and try to find some blankets,” Shlomie said.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but why don’t we take all three coats and put them over the three of us. If we huddle together we will be warm,” Isaac said.
“You’re worried about Zofia?”
“Yes, of course I am. She is bleeding. I am very worried.”
“You did this to her,” Shlomie said. “How could you get her pregnant in the position we are in?”
“Shut up,” Isaac said, angrier with himself than at Shlomie. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should never have done this. If she dies, I will never forgive myself. ” Isaac began to cry. God, take me instead. I did this. It isn’t her fault. It’s mine. Please, take me instead. I am begging you.
For several moments, the room was dark cold and silent except for the sobbing that came from Isaac’s tortured soul.
“It’s all right. She’ll be all right,” Shlomie said. They could see his white breath as he spoke.
Zofia was drained. Her eyes were closed, but she could hear them. It was difficult to speak but, she knew that she must.
“Isaac…” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Isaac, my love, don’t blame yourself I wouldn’t trade one minute of what we had. I am not sorry for what we did.”
He leaned his body down beside her and took her into his arms. The tears still fell freely on his face, dripping onto hers.
“I love you.” It was all he could say. “And I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” There was no way to change the past.
“I love you too, Isaac. And I am really not sorry…”
All through the night, Isaac held Zofia, watching her sleep. And in the morning, he breathed a sigh of relief, as the sun burst like a bouquet of ribbons through the slats of wood in shed, to find she was still alive. Now with the light, Isaac could see everything in the room. It was filled with useful tools, matches, and horse blankets. Isaac put the entire pile of blankets on top of Zofia. He took his coat and put it on. The strapped his bow and arrow to his back
“You’re going hunting?” Shlomie asked.
“Yes. Stay with her. I am going to see what I can find.”
Several hours passed before Isaac returned carrying a bird, a squirrel, and a bunch of soft, brown apples. In his other hand he held a steel bucket filled with water.
He put the apples down. “I took these from the farm down the way. I turned the bushel over. The farmer will think that the horse got to them. And I was blessed. I caught two animals for us.”
Shlomie nodded. “Where did you get the water?”
“I walked to another farm and stole the horse’s water.”
“You must be tired.”
Isaac shrugged. He was tired, exhausted in fact. He’d not slept a wink the entire night. “How is she?” Isaac bent beside Zofia.
“She’s weak.”
Isaac nodded.
“I’m going to start a fire,” Isaac said, spying a fifty-five gallon oil drum, a small can of kerosene, and a saw.
“It’s too dangerous. We can’t start a fire inside of a building. Are you crazy? The windows are all boarded up. We’ll die in here.”
“I’ll knock the windows out. Look there’s an axe on the wall.”
“No, this is madness,” Shlomie said
Zofia lay shaking on the ground too weak to voice an opinion.
“Leave if you don’t like it, but I am going to do it,” Isaac said. “I’ll be back. I’m going to gather some tree branches. Watch Zofia. I won’t be long.”
Isaac returned with a pile of branches. He laid them on the ground. Then he shivered as he sawed the top of the oil drum off. There was almost no oil left. He placed the branches inside then poured a small amount of kerosene over them. Next, he took the axe and punched the windows out. A rush of frigid air flooded into the shed. Isaac took a match and lit the contents of the drum. Then he quickly opened the door. The fire began slowly but quickly it caught and the room began to grow warmer. Then he cleaned the fur and feathers from the animals he’d caught, and began to roast them.
The smell of food filled the shed and even Zofia was stirred by the odor. When the meat was cooked, Isaac tore off tiny pieces and put them into Zofia’s mouth. The meat was dry and difficult to chew. She gagged. Seeing this, Isaac realized that she could not eat this without his help. He chewed tiny pieces of the foul until they were soft, then he put them into Zofia’s mouth. She swallowed. He continued until she lay back and fell asleep. Every night as the sunset, Zofia could hear Isaac as he prayed in Hebrew, on his knees beneath the moon. And once he’d finished the prayers, he begged God to spare Zofia, to take him in her place.
Then, in the morning, Isaac would go out to hunt. Some days he returned with nothing, but most days he caught at least a small animal, enough to get them through. Shlomie offered to accompany Isaac ice fishing, but Isaac wanted Shlomie to stay with Zofia.
As the winter broke, Zofia grew stronger. She’d lost the baby, she knew it by the amount of blood she’d shed. But at least God had spared her life. Zofia was able to eat by herself now, and every day Isaac insisted that she walk around the shed for a while for exercise.
“We need to think about moving on. The farmer will be coming out to begin his planting work soon. We certainly want to be gone before then,” Shlomie said.
“Yes, I know. I hate to move. Zofia is thriving here,” Isaac said.
“Next week? I am not sure, but I think, if my calculations are right, it is nearly the end of March. We are taking a big chance being here,” Shlomie said, “I’ve been keeping a log to help me know what month we are in, ever since I escaped from Treblinka.”
“What year is it?” Isaac asked.
“If my calculations are correct, it’s 1945.”
Chapter 75
Shlomie proved to be right. It was three days later that the man who owned the farm came to the shed. When the door opened, Zofia felt as if her heart would burst in her chest. Isaac immediately stood up, his hand on the pistol in his back pocket.
“What is this?” A man with weathered skin blotched with red looked at them horrified. “Who are you? Jews?”
Shlomie nodded. Zofia got up and stood beside Isaac who moved her away just enough to keep control of the situation.
“Jews? In my shed? How long have you been here?” the farmer didn’t wait for an answer. “If you’d been caught I would have been blamed. How dare you? How dare you? I’m going to inform the authorities today.” The man’s face grew red with anger. “You have put me and my family in danger, you filthy, miserable Jews. Don’t you move!” He looked at their faces then began to cry out “Alex, Alex come quickA There are Jews in the…”
Before he could continue, Isaac had pulled the gun and shot him in the head. Blood spurted all over the walls. Zofia gagged and turned away.
“Come. Let’s go! Hurry!” Shlomie said.
Isaac stood, stunned, looking at the gun. �
��I’ve killed a man. God, forgive me. I’ve committed the ultimate sin.” His hands were shaking.
“Stop it, Isaac, come on. We can pray later. Right now, we have to get out of here. Zofia, are you all right to walk?” Shlomie shook Isaac’s shoulder.
Zofia nodded still in shock.
Isaac still stared at the gun. Shlomie slapped him hard across the face. “Come on! Let’s go.”
The slap brought Isaac back to reality.
The three ran from the shed, Isaac gripping Zofia’s arm to help her. It was less than half a mile until the welcoming trees of the forest beckoned with protection. Once they’d ventured far enough away from the road, the three stopped to catch their breath.
“I killed a man back there,” Isaac said.
“You had no choice.” Zofia touched his arm tenderly
“I took the life of another human being.”
“If you hadn’t, we would be on our way to a camp right now. Isaac, you’ve never been in a camp, thank God. You have no idea, what goes on there. Just be glad we’ve made it through the winter. You did what you had to do. Enough said,” Shlomie said.
Isaac prayed every night asking God’s forgiveness. Zofia listened as he knelt singing the Hebrew prayers. He refused to make love to her out of fear of another pregnancy. But they lay in each other’s arms, rubbing each other’s backs tenderly, kissing, caressing, and touching. The passion between them burned constantly, and they longed to allow it to consume them, but Isaac fought the need with all of the strength he could muster. Zofia meant too much to him to put her at risk again.
One night as Isaac prayed under the full moon, Shlomie called out to him from where he was seated against the side of a tree. A light drizzle had begun to fall.
“Bar-Mitzvah boy, enough already, you’re getting on my nerves.”
Isaac paid no attention. Instead, he continued to chant in Hebrew.
“You can be the Bar-Mitzvah boy. You didn’t suffer, and you’ve never been in a camp. What do you know of what it means to be a Jew?”
“Shlomie, please,” Zofia said.
Isaac finished and came to sit beside Zofia, taking her hand. “I’d appreciate it if you would mind your own business, Shlomie.”
“There is no God. If there was God he abandoned us when Adolph Hitler came into power.” Shlomie crossed his arms over his chest.
“You’re entitled to believe anything you’d like.”
“Look at our people, look at us…and you still believe there is a God?”
“I do. I believe every time I look at the sky and see the stars, every time I catch a fish that feeds us. We survived the winters against great odds. Who do you think was helping us? But most of all I know there is a God every time I look at Zofia.”
“Echh, I think we survived by sheer luck. And of course you believe, you’re like a schoolboy in love. I don’t know why I bother to talk intelligently with you.”
“Shlomie, that’s not fair. Isaac is entitled to his religion,” Zofia said.
“It’s not so much religion for me, it’s God. I don’t believe that any one religion is better or worse than another. For that matter, religion itself isn’t even important. I believe that each man knows what God expects of him.”
“Oh, and what is that? And how did our entire race of people fail God so badly that we ended up under Hitler’s thumb, marching off to death camps? You tell me smart boy. You have all the answers.”
“I don’t have all the answers. I wish I did. But I will tell you this. I believe that God expects us to stand by him and to know that he is there for us.”
“And was he there for the poor souls as they walked into the gas chambers at Treblinka? I watched them Isaac. I saw it with my own eyes,” Shlomie said, “I cleaned the ashes from the crematorium with bits of bone and teeth mixed in. I saw little children tortured… Why was that, Isaac? Why did God allow that?”
“I don’t know, Shlomie, I don’t have the answers. I can’t tell you. All I know is that I believe. And I don’t think that God was responsible for what happened in Treblinka. It was the Nazis.”
“Ech, isn’t your God stronger than Hitler?”
“Yes, and he must have a reason for allowing this to happen. I don’t know the reason. Maybe someday I will but I don’t know it now. I only know that there is a God, and He is here with us in this forest, and regardless of what we have lost. We three are blessed because we are alive.”
“Please, let’s try to get along. I realize that it’s difficult, because we are together all the time. But, we have to try to make the best of it, all right? This arguing and fighting is not good for any of us,” Zofia said.
Both men nodded.
“Then we are all in agreement” She smiled.
Chapter 76
In the morning, Isaac took his bow and arrow and went out to hunt. He needed the time alone. Sometimes it seemed as if he had to exercise all the self-control he had not to beat the hell out of Shlomie. Obviously, Shlomie harbored feelings of jealousy. He’d been in love with Zofia too, but she’d chosen Isaac, and now he constantly found reasons to pick on everything Isaac said or did. The sun broke through the trees in mid-March. The weather was still cool, but not nearly as bad as it had been a month earlier. Isaac was lost in thought. He wished that he could make love to Zofia. He yearned to feel her body pressed against his own, to feel the heat of her breath on his neck. How he loved her with every beat of his heart. A large black bird flapped its wings as it took flight above him. Isaac looked up. When he looked back down four German soldiers stood in front of him with their guns drawn.
Chapter 77
Isaac did not return that afternoon or that evening to the little campsite where he’d left Zofia and Shlomie. Zofia kept watching for him to appear through the trees, wearing his big smile, carrying a kill he’d made for dinner that night. But as time passed, she began to panic. Darkness began its descent upon the forest, bringing with it the dreadful fear of disaster.
“Shlomie, Isaac is never gone this long when he goes out hunting. Something is not right.”
“I hope he wasn’t shot, or caught by a German.”
Zofia was already pacing the forest floor in panic.
“Oh, dear God, no. Not my Isaac!” she cried, reaching her arms up to the sky. “Please, God, please send him back to me.”
Shlomie had been sitting with his back against a tree. He too had begun to fear the worst. He walked over and hugged Zofia. “He’ll be all right. It’s Isaac. He’s strong. The strongest man I know. He’ll be back soon.” But he didn’t believe it himself. Isaac never stayed away for an entire day without telling them that he planned to be gone for a long time.
All through the night, Zofia sat awake, trembling with fear.
“I have to go and see if I can find him,” she said.
“In the morning. You can’t see anything at night. It’s too dark. Stay here with me, and as soon as the sun comes up I’ll go with you,” Shlomie said.
Zofia waited for dawn, barely able to contain her nerves. As each hour passed, she grew more alarmed. What could have happened? Was he killed? Would she and Shlomie even find his body in the morning? Was he hurt and alone in the darkness? She wrapped her arms around herself. “Isaac,” she whispered, “I love you. Whereever you are, I hope you can hear me.” Tears streamed down her face. And she rocked back and forth, until finally the light of the morning broke through the darkness.
Shlomie had not slept either. He‘d sat through the night without speaking, not knowing what to say. Now he got up and took her hand to help her to her feet.
“Come, we’ll go together and find Isaac,” he said.
All day they searched. First they walked in one direction and then another. Then they went back to the original area where they’d set up camp to see if he returned, but there was no sign of him.
Every day for a week, they continued to look for Isaac. Zofia began to lose heart. She could not eat or sleep. Shlomie went fishing and brought ba
ck two small fish, but when he cooked them over an open fire and offered them to her, she shook her head.
“If something has happened to him, then you must accept it. You have no control over this. And Zofia, so many people have lost so much. You can’t just stop living now. You can’t just give up, and there must be someone waiting for you once the war is over… Your parents, perhaps?” Shlomie said trying to offer some comfort.
“No, my parents are dead,” Zofia said. “But there is someone, my daughter, my Eidel. She will need me.”
“Yes. And for her sake, you must try to stay alive.”
Zofia nodded, her heart heavy with grief, with a sadness darker than any she’d known before. There was no doubt Zofia had suffered loss, terrible loss, but no loss matched this one. She wanted to die, longed to just give up and die. But she’d come so far, and soon, very soon, she would be reunited with Eidel, who needed her mother. At first, the food would not go down her throat, and much of it was regurgitated, but little by little Zofia began to eat small amounts, chewing slowly, and with every bite, she thought of her child.
The days passed into weeks as the weather grew warmer. One afternoon Zofia and Shlomie were crossing the road to steal strawberries from a neighboring farm. Since Isaac had disappeared, Zofia had become less cautious. Just then, an army truck came barreling down the dirt road. Shlomie and Zofia were paralyzed with fear until they looked further. Hanging from the side of the truck was a sight that made them both gasp: the red, white, and blue American flag. Americans! The Allies were here. Right here, in front of them, right this minute, right now.
Shlomie cried out to the soldiers, waving his arms in the air. The American’s pulled over and stopped the truck.
“Help us… Please, help us… We are Jews running away from the Nazis,” Zofie said in the English she’d learned from Don Taylor, and both she and Shlomie ran toward the truck.
A tall, handsome, athletically built man in his early twenties wearing the uniform of the American army jumped with ease off the back of the vehicle.
You Are My Sunshine: A Novel Of The Holocaust (All My Love Detrick Book 2) Page 33
