Read Online For Such a Time by Kate Breslin - Free Book Online Page A

by way of a secret message that there was a new guest in the house.
    Saul was so eager to impart his gossip that the stingy sculptor had willingly shared leftovers from the commandant’s table, his coveted reward for gathering kindling in the wooded lot behind the property. According to Joseph’s note, the commandant had returned the previous night accompanied by a beautiful young woman—at least by the boy’s standards—with eyes the color of a Judean sky and hair so light it shone gold. Like Hadassah’s . . .
    “Psst!” a voice whispered behind him. “Get over here and help us dig before the Hauptsturmführer sees you!”
    Morty glanced at his friends. Yaakov Kadlec and Leo Molski each held a pick and bent to the task of penetrating a mound of snow. Leo, a lanky middle-aged Pole, wheezed from the effort, while Yaakov bore the ruddy-cheeked, barrel-chested sturdiness of his Czech ancestors and emptied his lungs with even breaths. Steamy tufts curled beneath the brim of his felt cap as he ground the pick’s head into the snowbank and wiggled it.
    “You’re thinking about her again, aren’t you?” Yaakov said, pausing in his labors. “I know you well, Mordecai Benjamin. Don’t try to deny it.” He shot a sidelong glance at Leo. “He’s convinced Herr Kommandant’s woman is his maideleh. ”
    Leo’s rheumy eyes focused on Morty. “Is it possible?” he said through clotted breaths. His skinny arms raised the pick only to drop it with an ineffectual blow. “This woman . . . could she be your little girl?”
    “Ech!” Yaakov snorted. “If you believe that, Leo, I’ll convince you this is freedom.”
    With a furtive sweep he indicated the barbed-wire fence. “We’ve been here years now, and this yukel ”—he shot an impatient look at Morty—“still thinks she’ll come. He watches the gate every time a trainload of women arrives in the ghetto. Black hair, brown hair, green eyes, gray, it makes no matter—each of them is his precious niece. I doubt he can even remember what she looks like.”
    Morty turned back to the fence.
    “Ja, you don’t like what I have to say, Morty. But I tell you, you’re turning some kind of meshugeh over this nonsense.”
    “I’m not crazy,” Morty called over his shoulder. “She’ll come.”
    Yaakov muttered something under his breath to Leo, but Morty ignored them both. How could they understand? God sent him the vision.
    The commandant climbed inside the back of the Mercedes. Why didn’t the woman leave with him? Perhaps she sat warm and cozy before the fire inside his house. Morty smiled at the possibility. If Joseph was right, if she was beautiful, she could be Herr Kommandant’s wife—or his mistress. Either way, she was lucky to have landed on the safe side of the fence.
    And who knew this Nazi, anyway? He seemed unlike the other SS policing the ghetto. Since his arrival weeks before, he’d already exercised a measure of decency in the most obscure of instances: the collection of firewood.
    Morty still wasn’t certain if the commandant’s offer of table scraps was a genuine act of kindness toward Jews collecting wood for his hearth or a sadistic brand of cruelty. Didn’t he know that the hungry masses inside the ghetto assaulted those Jews returning with food?
    Nein, not just food; food was watery broth with a few potato peels thrown in. The commandant’s table hosted cuisine: Linzertortes and buttered noodles, apricot dumplings, all rich and decadent. Even the soldiers didn’t eat so well.
    The Jews drew lots so that each Tuesday and Friday five prisoners got to leave the fortress and collect kindling. Onceselections were made, Morty always wondered which of them would stuff his or her face before returning at the end of the day.
    Some, like Saul, avoided molestation by pretending to have eaten it all, packing his cheeks full and licking his fingers as he walked through the main gate. Only Morty knew that the rest of his meal was stuffed