commanded. “Don’t utter another word of German or Yiddish. You are to speak only in French. That’s an order—for you, too, Mia. If they hear you, they’ll—”
“What?” Jozef growled. “These people can barely understand anything. That’s why they’re in a cattle car. Because they’re stupid Jews. Like you, Papa, but not like me.”
The sound of the slap was as shocking as a gunshot. Jozef recoiled, and I stared at Papa in bewilderment. Never once had he hit any of us. My mother’s “Benjamin!” spoke of her anguish.
I was anguished, too. In this miserable, smelly moving carton, feeling filthy in my wool dress and heavy shoes, hungry and thirsty, uncomfortable and frightened, only the thought of Nate, of his defiance against his German masters, kept me from complaining as bitterly as Jozef. I tried to picture Paris and Jean-Phillipe, but the lights had dimmed even in my fantasy. Guilt at leaving without Nate’s pictures forced me to deny even the image of pleasure.
My father vomited. Just like that. Without warning.
“He was sick last night,” Mama said. “Oh, my God.”
“It’s nothing,” Father said. “Just too much excitement, too much stress.” But I could see he was shivering and I took off my coat and put it over his shoulders. He was too weak to resist, though he managed a “No, Mia, not needed,” and now it was I who shivered, as much from fear as from the cold.
The train seemed to be inching along. At this rate, it would take days to get to Warsaw, and in the interval who knew what might happen? It was only a matter of time, I thought, before Jozef turned against him, against all of us, and when that moment arrived, Mama and I would have to decide what to do.
I woke up on the worn wooden planking of the boxcar. Icy winds nipped through my dress. I felt an insect crawl along my scalp; then it disappeared. Was my mind going? There goes breakfast, I thought wryly, and realized that if nothing came to ease my hunger, my thought would no longer be a joke.
The train was going at a fairly good rate now; soon we would be out of this hellhole. I looked for Jozef in the blackness. There he was, a sleeping knot of bony arms and legs. I longed to run my fingers through his hair until the pomade made it stick straight up, just as I had when we were kids, and I’d run away squealing, with him chasing me as he used to do. But there was no place to run, and Jozef’s mood of the night before made any teasing seem like a bad idea.
My parents were sleeping nearby, their arms around each other, as though they were one form. I started to crawl over to them, wanting their warmth to enclose me, too, when I struck something on the floor. A body!
“Sorry,” I said, but there was something wrong. I had hit the body hard, but it hadn’t moved. I looked down. Two eyes stared up at me in the dim light coming through the slats in the sliding doors of the car. A woman’s eyes. Eyes that did not blink. Sleepless eyes. Dead eyes. I had crawled next to a corpse!
I screamed. My father sat up. “What is it, Mia?”
I couldn’t answer. Rather, I scurried like a rodent away from the body toward the far end of the car. There, two German soldiers sat facing each other, a small cooking lamp between them on which they had placed a kettle for tea. Should I tell them of the dead woman? Dare I speak to a German soldier at all?
“Let the corpses wait,” one of the soldiers said, sighing. “Let’s have some tea before we throw them out.”
I stopped breathing, strained to hear more.
“You throw them,” the other soldier—the younger one—said. “I’ve no stomach for it.”
“Better get used to it,” his companion replied. “There are corpses on every train, and we’re supposed to get rid of them before we reach Treblinka.”
“What then?”
“We dump this load, turn around and go back for the next.”
“More Jews?”
“Sure. There’s an inexhaustible supply. Raw material for the work camps.”
“Lousy duty,” the young soldier said.
“It beats the front. At least here your life’s not in danger.”
Work camps! A place called Treblinka, which I’d never heard of. We were going there. The final stop. We Jews, we “raw material,” were doomed. As quietly as possible, careful to avoid the bodies (alive or dead?) now more easily visible in the early morning light, I made my way back to my parents.
My father was sitting up, clutching his stomach. He smiled when he saw me. “We must be almost there,” he said.
I told him what I had overheard, watched comprehension creep into his eyes. “Betrayed,” he whispered. “The administrator fucked us.”
He had never before said fuck in front of me, and his use of the word was in its way as frightening as the conversation between the two Germans. “We must act,” he said, shaking Mama awake. “Do you know where Jozef is?”
“Yes.” I pointed.
“Get him, tell him to join us as quietly as possible. Tell him I don’t give a shit how angry he is at me, that he must come now and that he must listen.”
My father’s resoluteness comforted me. He was brilliant, Papa, and strong. He would save us. I did as he commanded; Jozef, perhaps struck by my urgency, followed me obediently, and we sat in a little group, waiting for my father to speak. All around us people were waking up. Groans, complaints, screams, whispers filled the air. At the far end of the car, one of the soldiers stood, the better to watch us. He gripped a rifle with both hands.
‘We’re in trouble,” Papa said. “Bad, bad trouble. This train is going not to Warsaw, but to Treblinka, which is where they’ve sent many of the Lodz Jews. I’ve heard that not everyone survives, that the work is harsh and there is no chance of leaving. Your mama, my Nora, would have a hard time there.”
“And you, Benjamin,” my mother said. “You’ve not been well—”
“So we must not go there,” Papa went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. He lowered his voice. “We must escape.”
Jozef snorted. “How? Do we fly away?”
His contempt angered me, but I shared his worry. I felt nauseated by hunger and fear. We were trapped in this car. There was no escape.
“We jump,” Papa said, disregarding Jozef’s tone. “We make our way to the doors. The soldiers open them from time to time to give themselves some air, so I know they’re not locked. We’ll simply walk to them, single file. You, Jozef, will pull them open, so you’ll go first but jump out last. Mia, you’ll go second. I third, and Mama will hold on to me when I jump. From where we are, it can’t be more than ten or twelve large steps to the doors. We’ll wait until the train slows down, then chance it. Don’t run, but walk quickly, steadily, as though on an important mission. We’ll stand now, but not all at once. Try to make it seem as if we’re not part of one family. Stay close enough to me so you can hear me whisper. I’ll count to three. Then we’ll go. And for God’s sake, don’t hesitate.”
Mama and I were so used to following Papa’s orders that we didn’t argue. If he said this was the right plan, then it was. But Jozef had questions.
“Assuming we survive the fall, what can the four of us do in the middle of nowhere, without money or food, without passports? We’ll be caught within days, if we’re lucky to last that long, and then God knows what will happen to us.”
Papa looked at him emotionlessly. “If you don’t want to come with us, that’s your choice. We will need you, though, to slide the doors open, for you are the only one strong enough to do it. You might be better off at Treblinka. I don’t think the rest of us would be.”
My mother began to cry. Papa put his arm around her waist, and she looked at him with shining eyes. “Trust me,” he