People of the Book. Geraldine Brooks

and her sister and hugged them hard. She kissed her aunt. Then she turned away and stumbled through the press of sagging bodies, rubbing her eyes with the fleshy part of her hand. When she reached the door to the storeroom, she waited until the guards’ eyes were elsewhere before she opened the door and slipped inside. She rested her back against the door, wiping her nose on her sleeve. As she dropped her arm, a small white hand reached out and grabbed it. The hand belonged to a girl with an intense elfin face, eyes huge behind thick glasses and finger planted firmly on lips. She pulled Lola down, hard, then pointed at the window. Lola saw the shape of a German helmet, the muzzle of a rifle, passing by the broken window.

      “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 partisankas?” 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