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Nathan looked away, his jaw clenched.
Nacha stood in silence then, her face upturned towards the window, the fresh air from outside drifting in and filling her nostrils with the sweet smell of snow.She tugged off her gloves and shoved them in her pockets.
As the train lurched forward, she reached up a hand and clenched her fingers around the barbed wire.It was cold and hard against her flesh.The fingers of her other hand, she pushed through the opening between strands of wire and felt the air rushing over them as the train gathered speed.
Nathan turned towards her, his eyes full of pain.
“Are you okay?”
She smiled at him through a veil of tears.“I’ll miss you.”
He nodded, swallowed.“We’ll try to stay together.”
“You know they won’t allow that.But you and Tata should keep close.Maybe you can make it, if you stick together.”
Tata grabbed her and pulled her into a hug, burying his face in her hair.“Don’t talk like that,moja córka.You will make it too, and we’ll be together again before you know it.”
It wasn’t true.She knew that, and he did too, but it was nice to hear him say it all the same.
It took her a few moments to realise that she was holding a strand of barbed wire in one hand.When Tata released her from his embrace, the wire snagged on his coat.She frowned at it.
“Where’d that come from?”Nathan asked.
She looked up at the window and saw a space where the wire had been.“From there.”
Both men followed her pointing finger.Tata gasped.“The wire came away.”
As the train rattled along the tracks, and with no one else paying them any attention, the three of them worked and jiggled, pulled and twisted the barbed wire covering the window until every last piece was either laying on the floor of the carriage or bent back away from the opening.
They worked in silence, not willing to speak about their hopes in case they might be dashed away or some fellow passengers heard what they were doing and crushed them in a rush to get to the window.But their eyes gleamed as they smiled at one another.
It was a small chance, but it was something.Nacha had seen the guards seated on top of trains in the past, waiting to shoot anyone who dared to escape.But it was cold and this train had a layer of snow on its roof, which had only grown thicker while they waited at the station.
Perhaps the guards had decided the weather didn’t merit a ride on the roof today.She couldn’t be certain, but it was worth the risk to make a run for it if they could manage to get out the small window.A shot in the back was preferable to whatever awaited them in Treblinka.
When the train blew its whistle, the sound jolted Nacha.Her nerves were frayed.She stood on her tiptoes, trying to see out the window to get some idea of where they were.
“We’re in Warsaw, at the main station,” Tata said.
“How do you know?”
“The direction we travelled, plus the distance.It would be the first big station, and the place they’d be most likely to stop to take on more passengers.As soon as we stop, we get out.Nacha first.Me last.Got it?”
They all muttered their agreement and waited in silence as the train slowed to a stop with a screech of brakes.It shuddered a moment, then was still.
Tata boosted Nacha and she pushed her arms through the window first, followed by the rest of her body.It was an easy fit, but she knew Tata would struggle to make it through the opening.He was bigger than she was, his shoulders much wider.
When her legs were partway through, she pushed against the carriage with her hands and fell away from it, tucking into a somersault.The gravel bit hard into her back and she stifled a grunt of pain as she rolled away from the train.
Quickly she leapt to her feet and scurried back to the shelter of the carriage.She helped Nathan down so he didn’t have to land on his back the way she had.Then they both reached for Tata.He wriggled and squirmed while they pulled and tugged until finally all three of them were standing beside the carriage.
There was no platform on the other side, only a few trees, bare of leaves, and beyond them a fence and some residential buildings.No one had seen them escape.
Tata gave them a nod and they all ducked low, then ran along the tracks, passing the carriages at the back of the train.It’d grown dark as the train travelled, and the darkness hid them from the guards on the platform as well as their fellow prisoners, who didn’t seem to notice they’d escaped, much to Nacha’s surprise.
Perhaps they were all so busy looking at the doors, waiting for them to open on the other side, that they didn’t see the wriggling forms slipping out through the last window.Whatever it was, when Nacha, Nathan and Tata sprinted away from the platform and slipped through a hole in the wire fence, no one saw them leave and nothing stopped their escape.
They ran through the streets of Warsaw, glancing back the way they’d come every now and then to see if they were followed.Eventually they slowed their pace and tugged the bands from their arms, stowing them in their pockets.
They walked in silence, turning right, then left, then right again.Nacha’s pulse slowed the further they got from the train tracks.She still couldn’t quite believe they’d done it.How was it possible?The God of her ancestors was watching over them.Or perhaps it’d been Jan, Waltrina and Jadzia’s prayers that’d saved them.
Whatever it was, whoever had blinded the eyes of the thousands of people who’d inextricably missed their escape, she was grateful.
They hid in shadows and scurried along streets until finally they climbed the stairs to Aunt Irka’s apartment and knocked on the door.When she opened it, she gasped and then ushered them inside with tears in her eyes.
She hugged them one by one and kissed their cheeks, exclaiming that she’d never seen such a thing in all the days of her life.How on earth had they managed such a miracle?
Nathan excitedly told her about their escape as she boiled a pot of tea and reheated some pork stew, which was light on the pork, but was the most delicious meal Nacha had ever eaten in her entire short life.
