People of the Book (10 page)

“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’ entrance and motioned her to wait on a bench inside an alcove near the door.

He was gone a long time. Lola could hear people beginning to move around the building. She began to wonder if Sava had deserted her there. But exhaustion and grief had made her apathetic. She could no longer take any action to save herself. So she sat and she waited.

When Sava reappeared, there was a tall gentleman beside him. The man was middle-aged and very well dressed, with a crimson fez set atop dark hair streaked with silver. There was something a little familiar about him, but Lola could not think where they might have met. Sava took her hand and pressed it reassuringly. Then he was gone. The tall man beckoned Lola to follow him.

They left the building. He ushered her into the backseat of a small car, signaling that she should lie down on the floor. Only when he had started the motor and pulled out from the curb did he speak. His accent was refined, his voice gentle as he questioned her about where she had been and what she had done.

They had not driven any great distance when he stopped the car and got out, telling Lola to stay where she was. He was gone just a few minutes. When he came back, he handed Lola a chador. Then, he motioned her urgently to stay down.

“May God save us, effendi!”

He exchanged pleasantries with the passing neighbor, pretending to search for something in the car’s trunk. When the man turned the corner, he opened the rear door and gestured for Lola to follow. She pulled the chador across her face and kept her eyes down, as she had seen the modest Muslim women do. Inside the building, he rapped sharply on the door, and it opened at once.

His wife was standing just inside, waiting. Lola looked up and recognized her. It was the young wife who had given her coffee when she came to collect the laundry. Stela showed no sign of remembering Lola, which was unsurprising given the great change in her appearance. The year had aged her. She was gaunt and sinewy, her hair cropped short like a boy’s.

Stela looked anxiously from Lola’s haggard face to her husband’s concerned one. He spoke to her in Albanian. Lola had no idea what was said, but she saw Stela’s eyes widen. He continued speaking, gently but urgently. Stela’s eyes filled, but she wiped them with a lace handkerchief and turned to Lola.

“You are welcome in our home,” she said. “My husband tells me you have suffered very much. Come now and wash, eat, rest. Later, when you have slept, we will talk about how best to keep you safe.” Serif looked at his wife with a gentle expression of mingled tenderness and pride. Lola saw the glance, and how Stela colored as she returned it. To be loved like that, she thought, would be something indeed.

“I must return to the museum now,” he said. “I will see you this evening. My wife will take good care of you.”

The feel of hot water and the fragrant scent of soap were luxuries that, to Lola, seemed to belong to another lifetime. Stela gave her steaming soup and fresh bread, and Lola tried her best to eat it slowly, although in her extreme hunger she could have picked up the bowl in both hands and drained it. When she was done, Stela led her to a small alcove room. There was a baby’s crib, and in it an infant napped. “This is my son, Habib, born last autumn,” she said. She indicated a low sofa along the wall. “This can be your room, too.” Lola lay down, and even before Stela returned with a quilt, she had fallen into an exhausted sleep.

When she woke, it was like swimming up through deep water. The crib beside her was empty. She could hear soft voices, one anxious, one reassuring. Then a baby’s gentle mewling, quickly quieted. Lola saw that there were clothes set out for her on the bed. They were unfamiliar clothes, a full skirt such as an Albanian Muslim peasant woman might wear, and a large white scarf to cover her cropped hair that could also be pulled across the bridge of her nose to hide the lower part of her face. She knew that her own clothes, Partisan fatigues she’d sewn months ago from a piece of gray blanket, would have to be burned to ashes.

She dressed, struggling a little with the unfamiliar head scarf. When she entered the book-lined sitting room, Serif and Stela were sitting close together, deep in conversation. Serif had his son, a fine little fellow with a shock of dark hair, perched on his knee. His free hand was entwined with his wife’s. They looked up as Lola entered the room, and swiftly withdrew their hands. Lola knew that conservative Muslims felt it was inappropriate even for married couples to express physical affection in the presence of others.

Serif smiled at Lola kindly. “My, you make a fine peasant!” he said. “If you do not mind, the story we will tell to explain your presence here is that you are a maid sent by Stela’s family, to help her with the baby. You will pretend to know no Bosnian language at all, and that way you will not need to speak to anyone. In the presence of others, Stela and I will address you in Albanian. You just need to nod to anything we say. It will be best if you do not leave the apartment at all, so very few people will even know you are here. We will need to give you a Muslim name…does Leila suit you?”

“I don’t deserve this kindness,” she whispered. “That you, Muslims, should help a Jew—”

“Come now!” Serif said, realizing that she was about to cry. “Jews and Muslims are cousins, the descendants of Abraham. Your new name, do you know it means ‘evening’ both in Arabic, the language of our Holy Koran, and also in Hebrew, the language of your Torah?”

“I…I…we never learned Hebrew,” she stammered. “My family wasn’t religious.” Her parents had gone to the Jewish social club, but never to the synagogue. They tried to dress the children in new clothes at Hanukkah, in years when they could afford to, but apart from that, Lola knew very little of her faith.

“Well, it is a very beautiful and fascinating language,” said Serif. “The rabbi and I were collaborating on the translation of some texts, before—well, before this nightmare in which we find ourselves.” He rubbed a hand across his brow and sighed. “He was a good man, a very great scholar, and I mourn him.”

In the weeks that followed, Lola found herself adapting to the rhythms of a very different life. The fear of discovery waned with the passing of time, and before long, the calm, quiet routines of life as the Kamals’ baby nurse seemed more real to her than her former existence as a
partisanka.
She grew used to Stela’s soft, tentative voice calling her by her new name, Leila. She loved the baby almost from the first time she held him. And she quickly grew fond of Stela, whose physical life in conservative Muslim families had been entirely domestic and private, but whose intellectual horizons, as the daughter and wife of learned people, had been expansive. At first, Lola was a little afraid of Serif, who was almost as old as her father. But his gentle, courtly manners soon put her at her ease. For a while, she couldn’t say what it was about him that was so different from other people she had known. And then one day, as he patiently drew her out on some subject or another, listening to her opinion as if it were worthy of his consideration, and then guiding her subtly to a fuller view of the issue, she realized what the difference was. Serif, the most learned person she had ever met, was also the only person who never let her feel the least bit stupid.

The Kamals’ day was organized around two things, prayer and learning. Five times a day, Stela would stop whatever she was doing, wash herself carefully, and apply perfume. Then she would spread a small silken rug that she kept only for prayer, and make the prostrations and recitations required by her faith. Lola could not understand the words, but she found the sonorous rhymes of the Arabic soothing.

In the evenings, Stela would work a piece of embroidery while Serif read aloud to her. At first, Lola had retired with Habib at that time, but they had invited her to stay and listen if she wished to. She would sit just a little outside of the circle of yellow light thrown by the lamp and hold Habib on her knee, rocking him gently. Serif chose lively histories or beautiful poems to read, and Lola increasingly found herself looking forward to those evening hours. If Habib fussed and she was obliged to leave the room with him, Serif either waited for her return or summarized whatever she had missed.

Sometimes, she woke in the night, sweaty from a dream in which the Germans’ dogs were pursuing her, or in which her little sister cried to her for help as they stumbled through dense woods. In other dreams, Isak and Ina disappeared, again and again, through the cracking ice. When she woke, she would lift Habib from his crib and hug him, taking comfort from the feel of his heavy little body pressed sleepily against her own.

One day, Serif returned early from the library. He did not greet his wife or ask after his son, or even remove his coat at the door, as usual, but went straight into his study.

After a few minutes, he called them. Lola did not usually go into the study. Stela cleaned that room herself. Now, she looked at the books that lined the walls. The volumes were even older and finer than those elsewhere in the apartment; books in a half dozen ancient and modern languages, with exquisite hand-tooled bindings of polished leather. But Serif was cradling a small, simply bound book in his gloved hands. He set it down on the desk in front of him and gazed at it with the same expression he wore when looking at his son.

“General Faber visited the museum today,” he said. Stela gasped and clapped a hand to her head. Faber was the feared commander of the Black Hand units, rumored to be responsible for the massacres of thousands.

“No, no, nothing terrible happened. In fact, I think what happened was very good. Today, with the help of the director, we managed to save one of the museum’s great treasures.”

Serif did not choose to relate a full account of what had taken place at the museum earlier that day. He had not even intended to show them the haggadah. But the presence of the book—in his house, in his hands—somehow overpowered his prudence. He turned the pages so that they could admire the artistry of the book, and told them only that the museum director had trusted it to his care.