The Jews stand with their hands feebly trying to cover their nakedness as the Ukrainians stoop to pick up their clothing. Mila refuses to undress. She knows there are only seconds before someone notices her, forces her to strip, but the moment her shirt comes off, it will be over. Her daughter will see her mother shot before her eyes. She twists her wedding ring around her finger, and for a brief moment allows herself the indulgence of remembering when Selim slipped the thick gold band over her knuckle, how full of hope they were—and then, she blinks.
Without hesitating, she bolts for the train, dashing along the pockmarked earth, tracing her daughter’s steps. She moves as fast as her legs will carry her. Pyramids of freshly dug dirt, shadowy graves, uniformed soldiers, and white-fleshed bodies fade to a blur in her periphery as she runs, her eyes fixed not on her daughter, but on the only person who can help her—the German. At any moment, she realizes, a rifle will crack, a bullet will send her careening to the ground. With tunnel vision, she counts the passing seconds to stay calm. Just make it to the train, she commands, the cold air searing her lungs, the exertion setting her calves ablaze. The young woman at the train, still holding Felicia, has turned so Felicia can’t see Mila approaching.
And then, somehow, miraculously, the twenty meters are behind her. Mila is at the train, unscathed, standing beside the German, panting, her legs shaking as she presses her wedding ring into the meat of his palm. “Very expensive,” she says, trying to catch her breath, willing herself not to make eye contact with Felicia, who’s turned at the sound of her voice. The captain eyes Mila, turns the gold ring over in his fingers, bites it. Mila can see now from the silver stripes on his shoulders that he is Hauptsturmführer. She wishes she had a curvier build, or ample lips, or something funny or flirtatious to say that might persuade him to spare her. But she doesn’t. All she has is the ring.
A rifle cracks. Mila’s knees crumple and she covers the back of her head instinctively with her hands. From a squat, she peers through her elbows. The shot, she realizes, was aimed not at her but rather at someone in the meadow. This time, a woman. Like Mila, she had tried to run. Mila stands slowly and immediately looks to Felicia. The woman she’d called “mother” just moments before has covered Felicia’s eyes with a free hand and is whispering something in her ear, and Mila’s heart fills with gratitude. The Ukrainians at the perimeter shout as they swarm their latest victim, who disappears as one of the soldiers kicks her corpse into a hole.
“A damn commotion,” the German says, slipping Mila’s ring into his pocket. “Wait here,” he huffs, leaving the women alone by the train.
Mila, still breathing heavily, glances at the young blonde-haired woman. “Thank you,” she whispers, and the woman nods. Felicia turns and locks eyes with Mila.
“Mamusiu,” she whispers, a tear trickling down the curve of her nose.
“Shhh, shhhh, it’s okay,” Mila whispers. It’s everything she can do not to reach for her daughter, to wrap her up in a hug. “I’m here now, love. It’s okay.” Felicia burrows again into the stranger’s coat lapel.
In the field, the soldiers continue to yell. “Line up!” they order. Their voices are cold, detached. As the Jews stand shivering beside their graves, the Hauptsturmführer commands the Ukrainians to form a line as well.
“Come,” Mila says, looping an arm around the woman’s waist. They hurry toward the near-empty train car to join the others who have been spared. The moment they are out of view of the soldiers, Mila gathers Felicia up in her arms and holds her close, devouring her warmth, the smell of her hair, the touch of her cheek against her own. The group shuffles into the corner where they huddle together, their backs to the meadow. Outside, they can hear sobbing. Mila holds a palm to Felicia’s ear, cradling her head to her chest in an attempt to block out the sound.
—
Felicia pinches her eyes shut, but she’s figured it out. She knows what is about to ensue. And at the sound of the first muffled crack, something in her three-and-a-half-year-old mind realizes she’ll never forget this day—the smell of the cold, unforgiving earth; the way the ground had shaken beneath her when the man a row over had tried to run; the way his blood had spilled from the hole in his head like water from an overturned jug; the pain in her chest as she’d run like she’d never run before, toward a woman she’d never seen before; and now, the sound of shots being fired, one after another, over and over again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Addy
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ~ March 1942
Since he arrived in Brazil in August, Addy has found that the best way to avoid dwelling too much on the unknown, on the alternate universe he’s left behind, is to keep moving. If he stays busy enough, he can see Rio for all that it is. He can appreciate the city’s limestone and tree-lined mountains, offshoots of the Serra do Mar, that jut up from behind the beautiful coastline; the ever-present, enticing smell of fried, salted cod; the narrow, bustling cobblestoned lanes of the centro, where colorful, Portuguese colonial-era fa?ades brush shoulders with modern, commercial high-rises; the purple jacaranda trees that bloom in what the calendar says is fall, but which is actually Brazil’s spring.
Addy and Eliska have spent nearly every weekend since they arrived exploring the streets of Ipanema, Leme, Copacabana, and Urca, following their noses to the various vendors selling everything from sweet corn pamonhas to spiced shrimp on skewers, savory refei??o, and grilled queijo coalho. When they pass a samba club, Addy jots down the address in his notebook, and they return later that evening to drink caipirinhas on ice with the locals, whom they’ve found to be quite friendly, and listen to music that feels fresh and alive, and unlike anything they’ve ever heard before. On most nights, Eliska foots the bill.
When Addy is on his own, his life is consumed by more practical concerns—like whether or not he can afford his next month’s rent. It has taken almost seven months for his work permit to finally clear. During those months, he’d struggled, eking out a living with odd jobs that paid under the table, first at a bookbindery, and later at an advertising agency, where he was hired as a draftsman. The jobs paid poorly, but without a permit there was little he could do but wait. He slept on the floor of his twenty-five-square-meter studio in Copacabana, splayed out on a cotton rug (a gift he received after installing the electrical system in the home of a new friend) until he was finally able to save enough to buy a mattress. He bathed beneath the faucets of a public shower on Copacabana Beach until he could afford to pay his water bill. He discovered a lumberyard north of town that was willing to sell him scrap wood for next to nothing, and he was able to build a bed frame, a table, two chairs, and a set of shelves. At a flea market in S?o Cristóv?o, he convinced a vendor to sell him a set of dishes and cutlery at a price he could afford. Last month, even though Eliska had been urging him to splurge on a proper churrascarian feast, he bought something more dear, something that would last—a Super Six Crosley tube radio. He found it used. It was broken and, to Addy’s delight, underpriced. It took him twenty minutes to dismantle it and figure out the issue—a simple one, really, just a bit of charcoal built up on the resistor. An easy fix. He listens to the radio religiously. He listens to the news from Europe, and when the news grows too bleak, he spins the station selector until he finds classical music, which soothes him.