Day After Night

Nathan’s conceit made her want to scream. She was so wound up she didn’t even try to sit down for lunch but stayed in the kitchen, pacing and sipping a cup of tepid tea. Every few moments, her hand went to her left shoulder, searching for the strap of the small machine gun she had carried for nearly two years in the forest. The damned thing used to slip off a hundred times a day and she was forever pushing it back.

“Some women fuss with their scarves,” Malka would tease, “but for Shayndel, it’s her darling gun.”

Shayndel assumed that the Palmach would not be handing her a weapon. We will be herded like prize livestock, she thought; they will take us out through the fence on the north side of camp, the emptiest, darkest, and least-defended flank. From there they will hurry us through those fields to trucks or buses, and then …

Thinking about what lay ahead set Shayndel’s heart pounding again, as though she were already on her way, crawling through a gash in the fence, running after strangers into a moonless night. She knew something about escapes.

During the war, she had helped Jews through the shadowy forest, always in the worst kind of weather, it seemed. There was one family with seven-year-old twin boys who arrived during an ice storm, all of them frightened out of their senses. The only way to get them to cross a frozen river on their way to the campsite was for the partisans to drag them across on their coats.

Shayndel remembered talking down to them, as though they were stupid, as though she were above feeling the kind of fear that rose off them like steam.

Shayndel started scrubbing the stove, moving her arm back and forth, one-two, let’s-go, ba-dum, so focused that she didn’t notice when Goldberg came in.

“This kitchen doesn’t deserve such devotion, I promise you,” he said.

“It’s just something to do,” she replied. “I’m going a little crazy. The waiting is hard.”

He took the brush out of her hand. “Go outside,” he said. “Get some fresh air. It’s a nice day.”

She did as she was told, but once she got out into the sunshine, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She headed back to the barrack to change her shirt, which was soaked.

She had only one other blouse, an ugly beige cast-off with a stain on the sleeve. At least I have good shoes, she thought, looking down fondly at the sturdy brown brogans she’d gotten from the Red Cross. She decided she would wear the short pants for the escape. They were her favorite item of clothing because of their deep pockets, front and back, and because they had once belonged to a boy named Marvin Ornish, whose mother had sewn a tag with his name into the waistband, securing it with a hundred tiny stitches.

She looked around, at the valises stuffed under the beds, the sacks hanging from rafters. She used to envy the others their rescued treasures, but not anymore. At least I don’t have to worry about schlepping or leaving anything behind, she thought.

Shayndel had a few useful pieces of clothes and a leather rucksack, but the possessions that mattered most to her fit into the envelope tucked under her mattress. She withdrew the photographs, slowly, one at a time. There was Malka, smiling right into the lens, fully aware of how pretty she was, though the picture didn’t do her justice. Her hair was much blonder than the black-and-white image suggested, and her brown eyes were flecked with green. She was curvy under the baggy jacket and wool trousers.

Wolfe never looked at the camera. He turned to gaze into the distance, showing off his impressive profile. It was an odd vanity in a man who seemed to care so little about his appearance. From the front, he was a garden-variety Jew, strange-looking, even, with his left eye a bit higher than the right. But from the side, with his dark brown hair, straight and heavy and hanging over that long, aquiline nose, he looked both intellectual and imposing. And he knew it.

Shayndel pulled out the picture of the three of them standing on cobblestones outside a church. Wolfe was in the middle, of course. I look like their little sister, she thought, which is why everyone thought that Malka and Wolfe were the couple and I was the third wheel. She put her finger on Wolfe’s mouth.

Why was I smiling like that? Had he said something funny? Or was it Shmuley behind the camera who made me laugh?

Shmuley had been the company clown, and he had been in especially good spirits the day of this picture. He had just recovered from a horrible bout of diarrhea. They had been pinned down for a week, cut off by the icy roads and the threat of desperate, starving deserters, and Shmuley had been so sick that Malka had wanted to get a doctor for him. She had gotten into a big fight with Wolfe about it, but he said it was too dangerous and put his foot down.

Shmuley got well without a doctor. But he was killed just a month after the picture was taken. A sniper. Out of the blue. Shayndel had no photograph of him.

What was his last name? “Oh my God,” she whispered, horrified that she could not remember.

She put the snapshots away carefully, placing them inside her scarred backpack. Her mother had scolded Papa when he gave it to her. “That is not feminine enough for a girl,” she said. “Give it to Noah.”

“It will keep her powder dry,” said Papa, who loved to plague them with puns.

It was quiet in the barrack. The rhythmic drumming had become a dull throb just below her navel. Let’s-go, let’s- go, let’s-go.

Shayndel walked to the clearing in front of the dining hall where Uri was holding his class. The day was perfectly clear, warm but no longer humid, and yet Tedi was sweating heavily as she stood before him, her face flushed and her fists clenched.

“This is not appropriate for girls,” Uri shouted, at the end of his patience. “It’s a kind of fighting that is too crude for you. Hand-to-hand. Brutal. When you reach the kibbutz, they’ll teach you to handle a gun, but not this.”

“Why shouldn’t I know how to defend myself?” Tedi said. “I want to learn to do what you showed him.” She pointed at one of the boys.

Shayndel slipped in beside Leonie and asked, “What’s going on?”

“He was teaching them how to break away if someone grabs you from behind.”

“There is no need for you to learn this. One of our men will take care of you,” Uri argued.

“But what if I’m alone?”