“It has nothing to do with me,” Shayndel said, “and certainly nothing to do with what I want. He goes on and on about war like it is something beautiful and noble, which only means he’s never seen it himself. War is hideous and it leaves you covered in shit. I cannot kill anyone else. I will not. Not even for the Jewish state. Someone else has to do it this time. I will work on a chicken farm and shovel manure. I will add up long columns of numbers in an office without windows. Anything but that.”
“What does David say when you tell him this?” asked Leonie.
“He doesn’t listen. He lectures me about the duty we all owe the Jewish people and the dream of a state. He puts his hand under my dress like it’s his right and he says I must make sacrifices.”
“What do you mean? Did he try to take advantage of you?”
Shayndel smiled. “Hardly. We’ve been going at it behind the last barrack almost since we met.”
“I had no idea,” said Leonie. “Good for you.”
“Not particularly,” Shayndel said. “Let’s just say he doesn’t know what to do to make a girl happy.”
“There are ways to teach them about that. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. And when there is real feeling …”
“You don’t have to tell me about sex,” Shayndel said. “In the forest, there wasn’t much to do at night, and we all learned how to make each other happy. But this is not about fooling around. It’s about him, David.
“Tonight he was completely impossible. I told him it was finished between us, and then he laughed at me and said I had cold feet. Like I was a little girl. Like I didn’t know my own mind! Now all I want is for him to disappear so I don’t have to argue anymore. Tomorrow wouldn’t be soon enough. Do you think I’m right?”
“Chérie, if you do not love him, you are right. And it seems clear that you do not love him.”
“I guess I wanted to be in love with someone. But not him. I’m just sorry that I didn’t tell you about him from the beginning. I felt badly that you didn’t have a boyfriend, too. That I betrayed our little plan with the two brothers.”
“Our plan? That was more like a game, a nice little story we told each other,” Leonie said. “Making plans is a game. Life chooses for you.”
“Do you really believe that? That we are like leaves floating on the river, wherever it takes us?”
“This is not a bad thing,” said Leonie. “It is not a good thing, either. That’s just how it goes.”
“So nothing makes sense?”
“How could you make sense of our lives?”
Shayndel lay still for so long, Leonie said, “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“I took no offense. I was just thinking what it would be like to keep that philosophy in mind on Yom Kippur.”
“It is the day of judgments, no?”
“Yes. God is the judge who writes in the heavenly book who will live and who will die in the coming year,” Shayndel said. “I wonder why I never objected to that idea. How can I permit anyone to speak of God sitting on His golden throne and deciding that Malka and Wolfe should be murdered, and millions of others, too? It is horrible.”
“Were they believers?” Leonie said. “Your friends?”
“They believed in Palestine and the dream for a homeland.”
“May it be so,” said Leonie, using the ancient Hebrew formula.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about the prayer book.”
“I don’t, but my grandfather used to say that. They took me to see him only a few times when I was a girl, but when I left and I said, ‘See you again, au revoir,’ he would answer, ‘May it be so.’ I used to think he was joking, but maybe he was a little serious, too. He died in his sleep, my grandfather, in his own bed, long before the Germans marched into Paris. He was not even sixty, but now I think he was a lucky man.”
“On Yom Kippur, everyone weeps for the dead,” said Shayndel, who had not cried when her friends had died, nor since.
“Weeping is terrible for the complexion,” said Leonie, holding Shayndel close, “but it is very good for the heart.”
Yom Kippur, September 17
Yom Kippur dawned overcast and muggy; it was going to be a hot day. Some of the men got up for early prayers, but without a regular breakfast hour or roll call, nearly everyone slept late. Tedi crept out of the barrack and walked through the quiet camp without seeing a soul.