People of the Book (8 page)

“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
partisanka
s?” 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.