A wave of hatred flooded Elie, but the caution that had kept him alive through the war made him pause. Why was the general driving himself? Elie looked up the road and listened carefully. No escort vehicle, no guards, no entourage. What happened to the drivers? Had they continued to Switzerland with the truck? Elie remembered one of them speak of the general’s exactness in recording the details of the loot in a small ledger. He felt the pockets again. Nothing. Was it in the car? He turned and saw Abraham drag something out of the overturned Mercedes-a black bag, or an animal?
Up close, Elie realized it was a fur coat. The hood fell back, releasing a cascade of black hair. A white hand emerged and punched Abraham in the crotch. He cursed, clenched her hair, and slapped her across the face. With the speed of a snake she grabbed his hand and sank her teeth into it. He yelled and stumbled back, holding his hand. Then he leaped forward, his right boot rising behind for a kick that would surely kill her.
Elie stepped between them. “Not yet!”
Abraham bent over in pain. “Nazi bitch!”
“Watch them.” Elie got down on his knees and hands to search the car, using the cigarette lighter to illuminate every corner of the plush sedan. Nothing resembling a ledger, but he found a handgun, its handle plated with ivory.
He tossed the gun to Abraham, who prodded the general with his boot. “Stand up! Schnell! ”
Elie watched with satisfaction-the rabbi’s son was doing the butcher’s work.
General Klaus von Koenig pulled himself up on one elbow. His breathing was labored, a gurgling Elie recognized as the sound of foamy blood filling the chest. His eyes squinted with pain as he looked at the woman. “ Auf Wiedersehen, meine geliebte. ”
“She’ll see you in hell!” Abraham’s ragged boot banged against the German’s back. “On your feet!”
With great effort, the Nazi rose.
“We are Jews,” Abraham said, aiming the gun at his head. “ Juden! ”
General von Koenig straightened up, pulled back his shoulders, and raised his right hand at the dark sky. “ Heil Hitler! ”
Abraham shot him in the face.
The woman gasped.
“ Nekamah!” Elie’s frozen lips hurt, reciting the Hebrew word for revenge. “ Nekamah!”
She stared at the dead German a few feet away. Tears lined her cheeks.
“Whore!” Elie addressed her in German. “Where is the truck?”
She tilted her head up the hill, where they had come from.
He kicked snow in her face. “Who took it? Which bank? Tell me!”
Clawing at the snow, she edged away, leaving a dark trail of blood. The car wreck must have injured her.
“Shoot her in the leg,” Elie ordered. “Pain will make her talk.”
“She’s bleeding already,” Abraham said. “A lot.”
“Do it!”
She raised her hand to stop him, shut her eyes, and recited, “Shmah Israel, Hear, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one.”
Elie was shocked by the words of the ancient covenant. A Jewish woman travelling with a Nazi general? Shedding tears for the dead monster? He ignited the cigarette lighter. In the small flame, her face was shockingly beautiful, the angelic features of a woman-child, her green eyes wide and moist.
Abraham stashed the gun in his belt, dropped to his knees, and took her hand. His face was fresh, cheeks red from cold, chin marked by the shadow of a beard. His blue eyes sat large in his face, filled with compassion under the shock of blond hair. “ Hear, O Israel, Adonai is our God.” He pulled out a dirty handkerchief and wiped her forehead. “But there’s no God. No Adonai. If only He existed!”
She touched Abraham’s lips, silencing him, and Elie killed the lighter.
“What’s your name?” Abraham slipped his hands under her and lifted her up effortlessly.
“Tanya.” Her eyes turned to the dead Nazi lying in the snow. “Tanya Galinski.”
Grabbing her arm, Elie said, “You grieve for him? Why?”
“Leave her alone,” Abraham said.
“Where is his ledger?” Elie pointed to the corpse. “He kept a record!”
“Enough with the questions.” Abraham turned, carrying her, and stumbled. But he regained his footing and kept going. “She needs a doctor.”
“Did he give it to you?” Elie felt up the fur coat. “Tell me!”
Tanya rested her head in the small of Abraham’s neck, and he carried her through the snow back to the road and down toward the village. It started snowing again, and the ground quivered under the distant bombardment. The Battle of the Bulge lit up the western horizon with a glowing, man-made dawn, as if the first day of 1945 was eager to begin.
Four months later…
Chapter 2
Tanya woke up warm. She felt Abraham’s breath on the back of her neck, found his hand, and guided it to her breast. The morning sun filtered through the pitched tarp they used as a makeshift tent, the light accentuating the printed swastikas that lined the edges. The forest around them was quiet after an early spring storm had left a thick, white layer that buried all sounds.
The night at the border seemed to belong in another lifetime. The tumbling Mercedes had left her with a badly slashed thigh. The bleeding would have killed her, but Abraham had brought her downhill to the village and found a doctor, who cleaned the wound and stitched it up. For several weeks, the three of them had hidden in the forest while a feverish Tanya teetered between reality and delusion. Abraham nursed her while Elie kept his distance. One day, when she was well enough to wash in a stream, two armed German deserters happened upon her, grinning at the sight of a young woman to be had. Elie cut one’s throat while Abraham broke the other’s neck. Their ruthlessness left Tanya both shaken and reassured.
Once she had recovered, Abraham and Elie resumed their daily hunting for vulnerable Germans and scraps of food. She stayed in the forest, scouring for edible plants. Her past life of Nazi upper-crust luxury had become a distant memory, replaced by a struggle for survival. The occasional longing she felt for Klaus and his calm affection grew rare while an overwhelming passion ignited between her and Abraham, who treated her growing belly as lovingly as he treated the rest of her body.
Tanya reached back, found his head, and caressed the blond hair, which had grown long enough to curl at the ends. He purred, his mouth against her nape, making her shiver. The air was cold, and she blew through rounded lips, her breath making saucers of steam.
Abraham pulled the blankets back over their heads, pressed his naked body against her back, and kissed her ear. He capped her breast with one hand while the other went down and began to pleasure her. She surrendered to the rhythm of his touch, focusing on this utter joy that filled her world, and groaned with delight as he entered her.
E lie Weiss bit his fingernail, tearing it off with a length of skin. He listened to their lovemaking with a mix of fascination and fury. After so many mornings like this, he knew their whispers, giggles, squeaky kisses, and muffled groans. It left him aroused and incensed.
But this morning, as he lay in the snow wrapped in sheets of tarp and stolen Wehrmacht blankets, within reach of their tent, he heard something different after they climaxed. It took him a moment to realize the sounds were whimpers. It was Tanya, sobbing mutedly. Was her face buried in Abraham’s bare chest, or turned away? Why was she crying after such ecstasy? Was it sadness, or overwhelming happiness?
Then Abraham began to sing, the words too soft to decipher outside the tent.
Elie crawled out of his shelter and put his ear to the tarp.
It was Hebrew, from King Solomon’s Song of Songs. Abraham chanted for Tanya the tune that had celebrated the beginning of Sabbath in the synagogue, back in the shtetclass="underline"