People of the Book. Geraldine Brooks

loaded Rid as she had been commanded. When the few rifles and the bag of grenades had been secured, she took the mule’s soft muzzle between her two hands and looked into his eyes. “Be safe, friend,” she whispered. “You, at least, they have a use for. May they treat you with more loyalty and care than they are showing to us.” She handed the halter to Milovan’s aide and gave him a sack in which she kept a precious ration of oats. The aide looked inside the bag, and from his expression, Lola realized Rid would be lucky to see the oats again before they warmed the aide’s belly. So she thrust her gloved hands into the sack and pulled up two generous handfuls. Rid’s wet breath warmed her hands for a moment. Before he had disappeared into the swirling snow, his saliva had frozen solid on the darned wool. Branko, she noted, did not look back.

      The rest of the group gathered around Isak, waiting for him to offer them a plan. “I think we will do best in pairs or small groups,” he said. His own intention was to head for liberated territory. Lola sat in silence as the discussion passed from one to another around the fire. Some aimed to go south, into Italian-occupied areas. Others said they would seek out extended family members. Lola had no one, and the thought of an uncertain journey to a strange southern town frightened her. She waited for someone to ask her about her plans, to offer her a place at their side. But no one said anything at all. It was as if she had already ceased to exist. When she got up and left the circle, no one said good night.

      Lola found her place in a corner of the clearing and tossed there, restless. She had piled her few belongings into a rucksack and had tied up her feet in layers of cloth she’d saved for bandages. She was lying, awake but with her eyes closed, when she felt Ina’s fierce brown gaze. The child was wrapped in her blanket as if it were a cocoon. She had a woolen hat pulled tight over her brow, so that her eyes were all that was visible.

      Lola did not realize she had drifted to sleep until she felt Ina’s small hand shaking her. It was still dark, but Ina and Isak were up, rucksacks packed. Ina put a hand on her lips to urge silence and then extended a hand to pull Lola to her feet. Scrambling, she rolled her blanket and pushed it into the pack with her few supplies, and trailed after Ina and her brother.

      The details of the days and nights that followed would return to Lola in her dreams. But in her waking memory, they remained a blur of pain and fear. The three moved in the dark and hid during the short daylight hours, snatching restless sleep when they could find a barn or a haystack to shelter them, waking in fear to the sound of a dog barking, which could mean a German patrol. On the fourth night, Ina’s fever rose. Isak had to carry her, shivering, sweating, murmuring in her delirium. On the fifth night, the temperature plunged. Isak had given his socks to Ina, and wrapped her in his coat, in a vain attempt to stop her wracking shivers. Halfway through the night march, just after they had forded an ice-covered river, he stopped and sank down onto the frozen pine needles.

      “What is it?” Lola whispered.

      “My foot. I can’t feel it,” Isak said. “The ice—there was a thin place. My foot went through. It got wet and now it’s frozen. I can’t walk anymore.”

      “We can’t stop here,” Lola said. “We’ve got to find some shelter.”

      “You go. I can’t.”

      “Let me see.” Lola shone her torch beam on the torn, gaping leather of Isak’s boot. The exposed flesh was black with frostbite. The foot had been damaged long before the accident in the stream. She placed her gloved hands over the foot to try to warm it. But it was no good. The toes were frozen solid, brittle as twigs. The slightest pressure would snap them right off. Lola took her own coat off and laid it on the ground. She lifted Ina and placed her on it. The child’s breath was shallow and irregular. Lola felt for her pulse and could not find it.

      “Lola,” Isak said. “I can’t walk anymore, and Ina is dying. You have to go on alone.”

      “I’m not leaving you,” she said.

      “Why not?” said Isak. “I would have left you.”

      “Maybe so.” She got up and began wrenching frozen sticks from the hard ground.

      “A fire’s too dangerous,” Isak said. “And besides, you won’t be able to light it with this frozen wood.”

      Lola felt exasperation, even anger, rise within her.

      “You can’t just give up,” she said.

      Isak made no answer. With difficulty, he struggled to his hands and knees, and then somehow stood.

      “Your foot,” said Lola.

      “It does not have to carry me far.”

      Lola, confused, reached to pick up Ina. Isak gently pushed her aside.

      “No,” he said. “She comes with me.”

      He took the child, so thin now she weighed almost nothing. But instead of going on in the direction they’d been walking, he turned and hobbled back toward the river.

      “Isak!”

      He did not turn. Embracing his little sister, he stepped off the bank, onto the ice. He walked out into the center, where the ice was thin. His sister’s head lay on his shoulder. They stood there for a moment, as the ice groaned and cracked. Then it gave way.

      

      Lola reached Sarajevo just as the first light spilled over the mountain ridges and silvered the rain-slicked alleys. Knowing she could not make it alone all the way to the liberated territory, she had turned back toward the city. She made her way down familiar streets, sidling along the line of the buildings, seeking whatever small protection they afforded from the drizzling rain and from unfriendly eyes. She smelled the familiar city scents of wet pavement, rotting garbage, and burning coal. Starving, soaked, and in despair, she walked without any clear destination until she found herself at the steps of the finance ministry, where her father had worked. The building was still and deserted. Lola climbed the broad staircase. She ran a hand across the dark bas-relief that framed the entrace, and sank down onto her haunches in the doorway. She watched the raindrops hit the stairs, each drop sending out concentric circles that linked for a moment and then dissolved. In the mountains, she had pushed the memories of her family to the back of her mind, afraid that if she opened the door to grief, she would be unable to close it. Here, memories of her father pressed upon her. She wished to be a child again, protected, safe.

      She must have dozed for a few minutes. Footsteps, from behind the heavy door, woke her. She shrank herself into the shadows, uncertain whether to run or stay. The bolts slid back with a whine of unoiled metal, and a man in workers’ overalls emerged, his muffler high around his chin.

      He had not yet seen her.

      She uttered the traditional words of greeting. “May God save us.”

      The man turned, startled. His watery blue eyes widened when her saw the dripping, wraithlike figure cowering in the shadows. He did not recognize her, changed as she was by her months of mountain hardship. But she knew him. He was Sava, a kindly old man who had worked beside her father. She said his name, and then her own.

      As he realized who she was, he reached down and lifted her to him in an embrace. Relief at his kindness overwhelmed her and she began to weep. Sava scanned the street to be sure that no one observed them. With his arm still wrapped around her shaking shoulders, he steered her inside, closed the door, and bolted it again.

      He took her to the janitors’ dressing room and wrapped her in his own coat. He poured fresh coffee from the džezva. When she could find her voice, she told him of her exile from the Partisan unit. When she came to Ina’s death she could not go on. Sava placed his arm around her shoulders and rocked her gently.

      “Can you help me,” she said at last. “If not, then please, deliver me to the Ustashe now, because I can’t run anymore.”

      Sava regarded her for a moment without saying anything. Then he rose and took her hand. He led her out of the ministry, locking the door behind him. They walked in silence for one block, two. When they reached the National Museum, Sava led her to the porters’