Page 11 of The World That We Knew

“Because she is your maker?” Lea asked, her heart breaking.

Ava shook her head. “Because she is yours.”

Once they had left the outskirts of the city, Ava gazed out the window. She could see the world beyond men’s eyes. There were angels in the canopy of the trees that lined the train tracks. Melahel, angel of safe travel and healing. Haiel, angel of courage. Ornael, the angel of patience who guards against sorrow. Each time someone was born, three angels were sent to watch over her for a lifetime, and these angels were Lea’s. Seventy-two angels guided humanity, but men and women couldn’t see them and, on those rare occasions when the angels spoke, they couldn’t hear. But Ava observed their world as easily as she did the world of human beings. She spied Azriel, the angel that could be seen by human eyes in the final instants of a life. He was following the train, for his work was never done. He came to peer in their window, and Ava held Lea’s hand. She wasn’t about to let him come anywhere near Hanni’s daughter.

Lea pulled away. “I won’t run,” she said.

At least not yet, not until she was ready, not until she had a plan. She looked out the window, but all she saw was her own reflection in the glass. Lea was someone completely different than the person she’d been before her grandmother told her to pack up her suitcase. She was the tall, resentful girl who’d once had a mother and a grandmother and a father, who went to school and was the best student in her class, who always followed rules, who had never been kissed, not a real kiss, not one she wanted, who did as she was told, who had no idea there were angels above them.

All through the night they could hear the wheels of the train; the sound soothed them and made them forget everything that had happened. Berlin was far away, it was slipping into the darkness, a tiger of a city filled with soot and ashes, where glass was never swept up, and fires were burned in the hallways of apartment houses, and people disappeared without a trace, and shoes littered the streets, left behind by those who had struggled. The sisters fell asleep in each other’s arms and dreamed of their mother’s kitchen and the babies that had been born there. Lea curled up with her head against the glass. She still had her hand wrapped around the scissors, and in her sleep she saw flowers blooming in their yard, each grown from a murdered girl’s tooth, on a stalk of thorns.

Heart of my heart, love of my life, the one loss I will never survive.

Ava felt something dark approaching, a black cloud of angels. Angel of destiny, angel of confusion, angel of crimes and of discovery, angel of rage, angel of the wicked, angel of the fallen. It happened at dawn, just before they reached the French border. The train suddenly stopped, so unexpectedly people were thrown from their seats, roughly awakened from their dreams. In the thin blue light of morning, they could see German army trucks. Soldiers were shouting orders. It was nearly April but frost was still on the ground. Passengers with suspect papers, or those who had what were considered Jewish features, were pulled from the train and led into the field, clinging to their suitcases, their eyes squinting in the new light. Some wore coats, others had their shoes off and were in their socks as they walked through the tall grass. Women and children were separated, and panicked mothers called out the names of their daughters and sons. Men suspected of being Jews were forced to pull down their pants to reveal whether or not they had been circumcised. A woman argued with a soldier, insisting she wasn’t a Jew. In an instant she was knocked to the ground, where she lay sprawled and unmoving, disappearing into the tall grass. A shot rang out. After that, no one in the lineup argued.

There was a hush as soldiers boarded to go through the rest of the cars, demanding to look at visas and examine faces and identity papers. Ettie reached for their papers only to find the ink had now smeared completely. Her face was hot and she muttered a curse she had never said aloud before. Zum Teufel mit allem. To hell with it all.

Ava felt the darkness enveloping them. She could see the future as if it were happening in front of her eyes. It was a good thing men and women could not foresee their fates. Even without a heart, without a soul, Ava could scarcely bear to know what was to come.

“No matter what, do not leave this train,” she told Ettie. She was nothing, mere clay, and her maker was everything, the giver of life and breath, but Ava understood that Ettie was also a headstrong girl. “If you stay I can protect you, but if you leave, I cannot follow.”

“You’re not made to protect me.” She nodded at Lea. “You’re here for her. That was the bargain.” Ettie grabbed her sister’s hand to pull her into the corridor. “We’re not safe here.”

“Why? We have our tickets and identity papers.”

“With running ink and your fingers turning blue? They’re clearly forged.”

Marta looked behind her, frightened. She had her father’s profile, the sharp nose and high cheekbones. “But the golem said not to leave.”

Lea was paying attention.

“She’s a dumb creature,” Ettie told her sister. “We can’t listen to her.”

They made their way toward the rear of the train. They didn’t speak, they didn’t run, and they didn’t look back at Ava, who’d come to stand in the corridor. She could go no farther, she was born to keep Lea safe. She wanted to cry out her maker’s name, but it was impossible; she had not been made to do as she pleased or come to her own conclusions. There were more gunshots outside. Soldiers went from car to car, asking questions. What church did you attend in Berlin? Recite the Lord’s Prayer. Tell me your address. Your pastor’s name.

They were not easily satisfied. There were suspicions even when the answers were correct. They looked for dark hair, dark eyes, sharp features, a nervous demeanor.

Juden müssen die erste Tür benützen, um den Zug zu verlassen.

Jews have to leave through the first door.

“Keep walking,” Ettie urged her sister. They went in the opposite direction of the crowd, to the far exit. But when they reached the rear door, a porter was there.

“My sister is sick. We need some air,” Ettie told him.

The porter looked them over. He had girls of his own, so he opened the door and told them to be quick about it.

There was no other way, really, no matter what the golem had said. When they leapt from the train there was a rush of cool air. They could not go backward now. The sisters held each other’s hands as they jumped. The grass was even taller here, and for a moment they were startled as they landed in a pool of mud. There were gnats in the air and swallows rose and fell in the sky. Ettie helped her sister to her feet and they ran. It was like flying as the blades of grass hit against them. They heard shouts from the rear of the train; they were commanded to halt. It was a rough voice, shouting from a distance. But when you are flying, you can’t stop. You don’t dare. Ettie ran so fast she feared her heart would burst. She could hear her sister right behind her, breathing hard, so hard it seemed as if she were crying.

A story their mother had told flashed through Ettie’s mind. There was a beggar who prayed every day for God to stop his sorrows. He believed no one had a more terrible life and greater losses, and he would do anything, please God, to make them stop. One day the east wind carried him away and dumped him into the sea, where he drowned. Then he had no more problems. So think over what you are complaining about before you do so and be careful, their mother always said. You may look into the world, you may wish you were there, but what if you were? You have no idea of what you might have to face. Their mother, who was so strict, so exacting, so sure of what was right and what was wrong, who loved them so, in some deep place she could never reveal, who loved them now and always.

Ettie wished for the east wind as they ran from the train. If only they could rise into the air and not come down until they reached Paris. A few more steps was all it would take. The forest was before them, a dark bower of pines. They simply needed to keep their eyes open and not look back. They must run, say farewell to everything they had ever known. They were racing so fast they lifted into the blue air. It was a miracle, it was more than anyone could ask for. They were nearly to the woods and the horizon shimmered. France was in the distance, in that pale horizon.

And then it happened. Ettie stopped in her tracks when the shot rang out, but her sister had already entered into the World to Come. It was not a miracle, it happened every day, it was the rising of a soul. That was how quickly a life could be lost, in the time it took to breathe in and breathe out. All that was left was the beautiful husk of who she had been, crumpled in the grass.

Ava could not follow them into the field with a slingshot or an ax. Instead, she had jammed down the window and called to the birds in their language, inspiring a band of crows to fly directly at the soldier who fired his gun in the girls’ direction. He got off one shot, then ducked to avoid the crows’ attack. The soldier cursed and shot again, squinting in the sun, but the other girl was gone. It was as if she had never existed, so he fired into the mass of crows that had ruined his aim, striking nothing but the sky.

Ettie was in the woods by then, stuffing down her sobs as if there was a bird in her mouth. She swallowed the bird of sorrow and it sang a mourning song inside of her. It was too late to turn back, too late to climb back through the kitchen window and find themselves in bed, alive and warm in each other’s arms as their mother called for them to see to their chores and start breakfast. It was too late to stop the angel in the black coat from writing down Marta’s name in small black script as he walked among the trees. Some things hold on to you forevermore: the sharp crack of sound, the whirl of insects rising from the grass, the birds disappearing into the trees, their feathers falling to the ground like black rain. Afterward, Ettie would recall the moment when her sister fell again and again, each and every night at the same blue hour. She would never forget her sister’s face or her mother sitting beside her on winter nights; she wouldn’t forget the morning when they dug earth from the river, or the tall grass that reached almost to her waist as she ran, faster and faster, into the forest, her heart hitting against the cage of her ribs, until she found the east wind and at last disappeared, wondering how she would ever find a reason to live.