“What about Rosalia?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
“We can’t waste any more time,” Zus said, squeezing her hand. Chaim nodded his agreement. “We must honor her by surviving. And when the Germans find her, perhaps they’ll feel that they’ve gotten their pound of flesh. She may yet save our lives once more.”
He was right, of course, but Yona couldn’t resist one last look back at Rosalia, who lay silent forever among the dead Germans, her sightless eyes staring up at the sky. Yona whispered a prayer to God, and then she followed Zus and the others as they fled back into the woods, heading for the river to hide their footprints, making them impossible to follow.
* * *
They ran for an hour and then waded downriver for another mile before emerging into a part of the forest that was unfamiliar to everyone but Yona. They had gone far enough that the Germans wouldn’t track them. The group finally stopped to rest in the shade of a thatch of oaks. Without a word, the Rozenbergs began to unwrap the bundles they’d been carrying, and Yona and Zus, who had been balancing a large bundle between them, did the same. Chaim and Leonid each had a small bundle, and in a moment, everything they’d taken lay on the ground before them.
Yona gaped at the treasure. She’d had no idea what they’d been carrying, but now, with all of it spread before her, she wondered if perhaps Rosalia’s death hadn’t been entirely in vain after all.
There were a dozen new machine guns, four pistols, and plenty of ammunition. In the bag she and Zus had been carrying, she was stunned to find two dozen loaves of hard bread, boxes of cigarettes, at least a hundred wrapped candy bars, and dozens of tins labeled Rinderbraten, Truthahnbraten, and H?hnchenfleisch. Chaim and Leonid had similar hauls, as did Regina and Paula, who were also carrying packages of pellets labeled Erbswurst, and bags of hard crackers. The bread and cigarettes had been soaked, but everything else looked mostly intact.
“What is all this stuff?” one of the Rozenberg brothers asked.
“The tins are beef, chicken, and turkey,” Yona said slowly, reading the labels as she reeled from the unexpected bounty. “And the pellets are to make pea soup.”
“Soldiers’ rations,” Zus murmured, and Yona nodded. It made her hate the Nazis a bit more for plundering villages and destroying crops when their own survival was already assured.
“With this, we’ll have enough for the winter,” Yona said. “This is what we were after.”
They exchanged looks as the weight of what they’d taken settled over all of them. It was Chaim who broke the silence. “We should go,” he said. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
Everyone mumbled agreement, and they hastily bundled the supplies into heavy packs once more. They would walk until they couldn’t take another step, and then they would rest for a few hours, continuing their homeward trek before dawn.
“Are you all right?” Zus asked, his voice low, as he fell into step beside Yona, who was leading the march through the woods.
“No,” she whispered after a moment.
He nodded, and she knew he wasn’t, either. They had all known the risks today, but losing Rosalia felt senseless.
“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra chirutei,” Zus began after a long silence, and Yona felt her heart flutter in recognition. “V’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: amen.”
It was the mourner’s kaddish, spoken in Aramaic to honor the dead. She took a deep breath.
“Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya,” they said together, their voices joining as one. Yona whispered along as Zus continued with the rest of the prayer, and she knew, from the way his voice cracked, that he’d said it many times for many people he’d lost. To say it now, alone in the forest without a quorum of ten men, wasn’t tradition, but it brought Yona comfort. They would say it properly later, just as they had for Aleksander and the others. But for now, this was enough to keep Yona moving forward, to keep all the survivors headed home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The winter moved in swiftly that year, frosting the forest in ice before the group had the chance to finish building their zemliankas. Still, they had managed to hollow the ground out before it froze solid, so they were fortunate; all that remained was to build the roofs and stoves, and that they had accomplished by the first heavy snowfall.