She hesitated. “I was raised by a Jewish woman, but I wasn’t born to Jewish parents,” she blurted out. “So maybe you’re wrong about me being family. Maybe I don’t belong after all. Maybe I’m just fooling myself.”
He accepted this in silence for a moment. When they reached the larder, she pulled the door open, and he held it for her as she ducked inside. He followed, and when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized he was staring at her. “You are our family,” he said when he caught her eye. “What matters is what’s in your heart, I think, and that’s so much more complex and personal than simply how you worship God. There’s a farmer I know, Christian as they come, wears a big cross around his neck, has a brother who’s a priest. And when the Germans came, he sheltered twenty Jews in his barn, and another five in his basement, without thinking twice. He helped because help was needed, and he couldn’t turn his back on his fellow man. He was family.”
“Besa,” Yona murmured. “What a good man.”
“And a dead man, I’m afraid. The Germans found the Jews. Killed them all, and then murdered him without a thought.”
Yona could see his eyes shining in the darkness now. “That’s terrible, Zus. I’m so sorry.”
“I am, too.” He hesitated. “Every time a good soul dies, I think the world gets a little darker.”
Yona thought of Chana, of her innocent eyes, of the bullet hole in her head, of the rough laughter she’d heard through the trees. “Then it is very dark now indeed.”
Zus nodded. “Yes. But there is light, too. In the times of greatest darkness, the light always shines through, because there are people who stand up to do brave, decent things. What I am trying to say, Yona, is that in moments like this, it doesn’t matter what you were born to be. It matters what you choose to become.”
Yona held his gaze for a long time. She didn’t know what to say. Had she chosen anything at all, in fact, or had her life been dictated by the choices of other people? Was everything she was a product of Jerusza’s decision to steal her on a warm Berlin night more than two decades earlier?
Still, though, Zus’s steady gaze, his confident assurance, brought her unexpected comfort, and she nodded, the lump in her throat suddenly making it too difficult to talk.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As the winter wore on, the new group fell slowly into the old group’s rhythm, and by the time the first buds of spring had begun to appear, they were an inseparable family. The time spent in close quarters had been undeniably difficult—the two large zemliankas were crowded, airless, packed too tightly with people. But the additional mouths to feed were outweighed by the hunting instincts of the new group—Zus and Chaim, in particular, had a sixth sense about finding and trapping animals that even Yona hadn’t been able to procure, and in the dead of winter, thrice the group had feasts of stringy, hearty red deer meat, followed by two days of watery venison stew. It was enough to see them all through the winter alive.
The arrival of the newcomers had changed the spirit of Pessia and Leah, too, and seeing the little girls merrier, giggling at the things said by Chaim’s boys, was like a tonic for the others. When the children’s hearts were lighter, the nights were lit by laughter and contented sighs rather than quiet sobs and muted nightmares.
Even Sulia seemed to thaw with the changing weather, and though she never apologized to Yona for the things she’d said in the clearing, she glared at her less, though it was clear she went out of her way to avoid her. Sometimes, if Aleksander stopped to help Sulia with something, or if he led her into the woods to show her some rudimentary hunting skills, Yona noticed the other woman smiling triumphantly at her. But she always seemed to catch herself, pasting on a syrupy smile instead. It would never be a friendship, but the tension felt as if it had abated. Yona still didn’t understand any of it, but she was glad.
The whole group was happier as they began to reemerge from underground, and though Yona knew the arrival of spring also meant that the danger of discovery increased, as there would be more enemy patrols in the forest, she was glad to be swept up in the joy of having survived to see yet another year. Nineteen forty-three was like a gift, and it wasn’t until the trees had begun to sprout leaves once again that everyone seemed to believe that they had done the impossible: they had survived the winter without losing a single soul.
But at night, while the group sat around a campfire surrounded by the last icy patches of clinging snow, quietly singing Yiddish folk songs and passing around cigarettes rolled from dried sunflower roots, Yona, who often sat alone while Aleksander patrolled the forest, felt a sense of foreboding nibbling at the sweet edges of joy. Something was coming, something dark, and she couldn’t put her finger on it. At night, while Aleksander snored beside her, his arm heavy across her, his head turned away, she closed her eyes and saw demons in the blackness.