We Were the Lucky Ones Read online

  ‘Go!’ Mila orders. ‘Quickly!’

  Felicia turns to face the train, looks over her shoulder, and Mila nods again.

  ‘Now!’ Mila whispers.

  As Felicia runs, Mila tries to resume her digging, but she’s paralysed from the neck down and all she can manage is to watch, breathless, as the scene she’s orchestrated transpires in slow motion before her. For a few interminable seconds, no one seems to notice the small body darting across the meadow. Felicia is a third of the way to the train when one of the Ukrainians finally spots her and points. The others look up. One of them shouts an order Mila can’t understand and lifts his rifle. Suddenly, every pair of eyes in the meadow is locked on her daughter’s small frame, watching as she runs, knees high, arms wide, appearing discombobulated, as if at any moment she might fall.

  ‘Mamusiu!’ Felicia’s scream cuts through the thin air, shrill, sharp, desperate. Despite the fact that she was expecting this, it severs Mila’s heart to hear her daughter call the blonde woman mother. Her eyes leap between Felicia, the German, and the Ukrainian with his rifle raised, awaiting approval. ‘Mamo! Mamo!’ Felicia bawls between breaths, over and over again as she nears the tracks. The German watches Felicia, shaking his head, seemingly confused. The young woman looks at Felicia and then behind her. She, too, is confused. The Ukrainians on the perimeter swivel their heads and scan the meadow, trying to decipher from where the child has come. Don’t any of you dare point, Mila silently commands, grateful that she hadn’t yet begun to dig a second hole, for Felicia. No one moves. After a few more slow seconds, Felicia reaches the train, and her cries dissipate as she flings her arms around the legs of the pretty blonde, burrowing her face into her overcoat.

  Mila knows she should return to her shovelling but she can’t help but stare as the young woman peers down at the feather of a child clinging to her thighs. When the woman looks up, she glances toward the meadow, in Mila’s direction. Please, please, please, Mila mouths. Take her. Pick her up. Please. Another second passes, then two. Finally, the woman leans down and lifts Felicia to her hip. She says something inaudible and brings a hand to the back of Felicia’s head, kisses her cheek. The Ukrainians look at one other, then snap at the Jews watching to get back to work. Mila exhales, looks down, steadies herself. It’s okay. You can breathe now, she tells herself. When she looks up, Felicia has wrapped her arms around the woman’s neck and laid her head on her shoulder, her rib cage heaving still, from the exertion of the run.

  ‘Garments off! Everything! Now!’

  The Jews look around, panic-stricken. Slowly, they set down their shovels and begin to untie their shoelaces, unbelt their trousers, unzip their skirts. Mila reaches for the top button of her blouse, her fingers shaking. A few of the others are already half naked, shivering, their pallid skin stark against the brown earth at their feet.

  ‘Hurry up!’

  The Jews stand with their hands feebly trying to cover their nakedness as the Ukrainians stoop to pick up their clothing. Mila refuses to undress. She knows there are only seconds before someone notices her, forces her to strip, but the moment her shirt comes off, it will be over. Her daughter will see her mother shot before her eyes. She twists her wedding ring around her finger, and for a brief moment allows herself the indulgence of remembering when Selim slipped the thick gold band over her knuckle, how full of hope they were – and then, she blinks.

  Without hesitating, she bolts for the train, dashing along the pockmarked earth, tracing her daughter’s steps. She moves as fast as her legs will carry her. Pyramids of freshly dug dirt, shadowy graves, uniformed soldiers, and white-fleshed bodies fade to a blur in her periphery as she runs, her eyes fixed not on her daughter, but on the only person who can help her – the German. At any moment, she realises, a rifle will crack, a bullet will send her careening to the ground. With tunnel vision, she counts the passing seconds to stay calm. Just make it to the train, she commands, the cold air searing her lungs, the exertion setting her calves ablaze. The young woman at the train, still holding Felicia, has turned so Felicia can’t see Mila approaching.

  And then, somehow, miraculously, the twenty metres are behind her. Mila is at the train, unscathed, standing beside the German, panting, her legs shaking as she presses her wedding ring into the meat of his palm. ‘Very expensive,’ she says, trying to catch her breath, willing herself not to make eye contact with Felicia, who’s turned at the sound of her voice. The captain eyes Mila, turns the gold ring over in his fingers, bites it. Mila can see now from the silver stripes on his shoulders that he is Hauptsturmführer. She wishes she had a curvier build, or ample lips, or something funny or flirtatious to say that might persuade him to spare her. But she doesn’t. All she has is the ring.

  A rifle cracks. Mila’s knees crumple and she covers the back of her head instinctively with her hands. From a squat, she peers through her elbows. The shot, she realises, was aimed not at her but rather at someone in the meadow. This time, a woman. Like Mila, she had tried to run. Mila stands slowly and immediately looks to Felicia. The woman she’d called ‘mother’ just moments before has covered Felicia’s eyes with a free hand and is whispering something in her ear, and Mila’s heart fills with gratitude. The Ukrainians at the perimeter shout as they swarm their latest victim, who disappears as one of the soldiers kicks her corpse into a hole.

  ‘A damn commotion,’ the German says, slipping Mila’s ring into his pocket. ‘Wait here,’ he huffs, leaving the women alone by the train.

  Mila, still breathing heavily, glances at the young blonde-haired woman. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, and the woman nods. Felicia turns and locks eyes with Mila.

  ‘Mamusiu,’ she whispers, a tear trickling down the curve of her nose.

  ‘Shhh, shhhh, it’s okay,’ Mila whispers. It’s everything she can do not to reach for her daughter, to wrap her up in a hug. ‘I’m here now, love. It’s okay.’ Felicia burrows again into the stranger’s coat lapel.

  In the field, the soldiers continue to yell. ‘Line up!’ they order. Their voices are cold, detached. As the Jews stand shivering beside their graves, the Hauptsturmführer commands the Ukrainians to form a line as well.

  ‘Come,’ Mila says, looping an arm around the woman’s waist. They hurry toward the near-empty train car to join the others who have been spared. The moment they are out of view of the soldiers, Mila gathers Felicia up in her arms and holds her close, devouring her warmth, the smell of her hair, the touch of her cheek against her own. The group shuffles into the corner where they huddle together, their backs to the meadow. Outside, they can hear sobbing. Mila holds a palm to Felicia’s ear, cradling her head to her chest in an attempt to block out the sound.

  Felicia pinches her eyes shut, but she’s figured it out. She knows what is about to ensue. And at the sound of the first muffled crack, something in her three-and-a-half-year-old mind realises she’ll never forget this day – the smell of the cold, unforgiving earth; the way the ground had shaken beneath her when the man a row over had tried to run; the way his blood had spilt from the hole in his head like water from an overturned jug; the pain in her chest as she’d run like she’d never run before, toward a woman she’d never seen before; and now, the sound of shots being fired, one after another, over and over again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Addy

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ~ March 1942

  Since he arrived in Brazil in August, Addy has found that the best way to avoid dwelling too much on the unknown, on the alternate universe he’s left behind, is to keep moving. If he stays busy enough, he can see Rio for all that it is. He can appreciate the city’s limestone and tree-lined mountains, offshoots of the Serra do Mar, that jut up from behind the beautiful coastline; the ever-present, enticing smell of fried, salted cod; the narrow, bustling cobblestoned lanes of the centro, where colourful, Portuguese colonial-era facades brush shoulders with modern, commercial high-rises; the purple jacaranda trees that bloom in what the calendar says is fall, but
which is actually Brazil’s spring.

  Addy and Eliska have spent nearly every weekend since they arrived exploring the streets of Ipanema, Leme, Copacabana, and Urca, following their noses to the various vendors selling everything from sweet corn pamonhas to spiced shrimp on skewers, savory refeiçäo, and grilled queijo coalho. When they pass a samba club, Addy jots down the address in his notebook, and they return later that evening to drink caipirinhas on ice with the locals, whom they’ve found to be quite friendly, and listen to music that feels fresh and alive, and unlike anything they’ve ever heard before. On most nights, Eliska foots the bill.

  When Addy is on his own, his life is consumed by more practical concerns – like whether or not he can afford his next month’s rent. It has taken almost seven months for his work permit to finally clear. During those months, he’d struggled, eking out a living with odd jobs that paid under the table, first at a bookbindery, and later at an advertising agency, where he was hired as a draftsman. The jobs paid poorly, but without a permit there was little he could do but wait. He slept on the floor of his twenty-five-square-metre studio in Copacabana, splayed out on a cotton rug (a gift he received after installing the electrical system in the home of a new friend) until he was finally able to save enough to buy a mattress. He bathed beneath the faucets of a public shower on Copacabana Beach until he could afford to pay his water bill. He discovered a lumberyard north of town that was willing to sell him scrap wood for next to nothing, and he was able to build a bed frame, a table, two chairs, and a set of shelves. At a flea market in São Cristóvão, he convinced a vendor to sell him a set of dishes and cutlery at a price he could afford. Last month, even though Eliska had been urging him to splurge on a proper churrascarian feast, he bought something more dear, something that would last – a Super Six Crosley tube radio. He found it used. It was broken and, to Addy’s delight, underpriced. It took him twenty minutes to dismantle it and figure out the issue – a simple one, really, just a bit of charcoal built up on the resistor. An easy fix. He listens to the radio religiously. He listens to the news from Europe, and when the news grows too bleak, he spins the station selector until he finds classical music, which soothes him.

  Just as he had on Ilha das Flores, Addy wakes early in Rio, and begins his days with his morning exercises, which he performs on the rug beside his bed. Today, it isn’t yet seven and he’s already sweating. It’s the end of summer in Rio, and the heat is intense, but he’s grown to like it. As he lies on his back bicycling his legs, he can hear the grate of metal gates being lifted as the cafes and newsstands three stories below open up on Avenida Atlântica. A block east, a blazing sun on the rise over the Atlantic beats down on Copacabana’s white-sand beach. In a few hours, the crescent-shaped cove will be teeming with its usual Saturday crowd: bronzed women stretched out in figure-hugging suits beneath red umbrellas, and men in short swim trunks playing endless games of soccer.

  ‘Eins, zwei, drei …’ Addy counts, holding his hands behind his head as he twists his torso left to right, reaching elbows to knees. Eliska once asked him why he always counted in German. ‘With everything that’s happening in Europe and all …’ she’d said, leaning over the bed to peer at him quizzically. It was the closest they’d gotten to talking about the war. Addy didn’t really have an explanation, except that when he imagined a drill sergeant prodding him to complete his exercises, he always pictured a block-jawed German.

  With his sit-ups complete, Addy stands and wraps his fingers around the wooden bar he’s hung in the doorway, counts out ten chin-ups, and then lets himself dangle, his body limp, enjoying the sensation of his spine elongating toward the floor. Satisfied, he showers quickly, then dresses in a pair of linen shorts, a white cotton V-neck T-shirt, canvas tennis shoes, and a straw Panama hat. He slides a pair of newly purchased wire-rimmed sunglasses into the v of his tee, then reaches for an envelope resting on his bed, tucks it into his back pocket, and leaves the apartment, locking the door behind him.

  ‘Bom dia!’ Addy sings under the awning of his favourite open-air juice bar on Rua Santa Clara, his shirt already clinging to the sweat on his back. From behind the counter, Raoul beams. Addy met Raoul during a game of pickup soccer one day on the beach. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ Raoul had chuckled when he caught a glimpse of Addy’s pale chest. Later, when he discovered that Addy had never tasted a guava, he insisted on a visit the next day to his juice bar. Since then, Addy has made an effort to swing by the bar as often as he can. He can’t get over all the different flavours on hand. Mango. Papaya. Pineapple. Passion fruit. Rio tastes nothing like Paris.

  ‘Bom dia! Tudo bem?’

  ‘Tudo bem,’ Addy replies. He’s become fluent in Portuguese. ‘Você?’

  ‘No complaints, friend. The sun is shining, and it’s hot as hell, which means it’ll be a busy day. Let’s see,’ Raoul says to himself, looking around at the produce arranged across the counter in front of him, ‘– ah! Today I have a special treat for you, just in – açai. Very good for you, a Brazilian specialty. Don’t let the colour scare you.’

  Addy and Raoul make small talk as Raoul prepares Addy’s juice.

  ‘So where are you off to today?’ Raoul asks.

  ‘Today, I celebrate,’ Addy says triumphantly.

  Raoul squeezes the juice from an orange through his press, mixes it with the dark purple acai puree in Addy’s cup.

  ‘Si? What are you celebrating?’

  ‘You know how my work permit finally arrived? Well, I’ve found a job. A real job.’

  Raoul’s eyebrows jump. He raises the cup in his hand. ‘Felicitações!’

  ‘Thanks. In one week I start work in Minas Gerais. They want me to live there for a few months, so this weekend I say good-bye for now, to you, my friend, and to Rio.’

  Addy had heard about the job in Brazil’s interior several months ago. The project, called the Rio Doce, involved building a hospital for a small village. He’d applied right away for the position of lead electrical engineer, but when he met with the project managers, they shook their heads, claiming that without the proper paperwork, their hands were tied. ‘Perfect your Portuguese, and come back when you’ve got a work permit,’ they said. Last week, on the day his permit was cleared, Addy contacted the managers. They hired him on the spot.

  ‘We’ll miss you in Copacabana,’ Raoul offers, and then reaches behind him for a banana. He tosses it to Addy. ‘On me,’ he winks.

  Addy catches the banana and sets a coin on the counter. He tries a sip of his drink. ‘Ahh,’ he says, licking the purple juice from his upper lip. ‘Lovely.’ A line has begun to form behind him. ‘You are a popular man,’ Addy adds, turning to go. ‘I’ll see you in a few months, amigo.’

  ‘Ciao, amigo!’ Raoul calls after him as he turns to leave.

  Addy slips the banana into his back pocket beside the envelope and glances at his watch as he sets off down Rua Santa Clara. The day is his to explore until three, when he’s due to meet Eliska on Ipanema Beach for a swim. From there, they’ll head to dinner at the home of a fellow expat they met a few weeks ago at a samba bar in Lapa. But first, he must mail his letter.

  His is a familiar face at the Copacabana post office. He stops by every Monday with an envelope addressed to his parents’ home on Warszawska Street, and to enquire about whether anything’s come for him. So far, the answer has been a consistent and sympathetic no. Two and a half years have gone by since he received news from Radom. As much as he tries not to dwell on this, his trips to the post office are a constant reminder. As the weeks and the months pass, the agony of wondering what has become of his family worsens. Some days it erases his appetite and fills his gut with a dull ache that lingers through the night. Other days, it wraps around his chest like a strand of steel wire and he’s sure that at any moment the flesh will sever, shredding his heart into pieces. The headlines in the Rio Times only heighten his anxiety: 34,000 Jews killed outside Kiev, 5,000 dead in Byelorussia, and thousands more in Li
thuania. These killings are massive, far bigger than any one pogrom, the numbers too wretched to fully conceive; if Addy thinks too hard about them, he will imagine his parents, his brothers and sisters, as part of the statistics.

  Brazil, too, is preparing for war. Vargas, who, like Stalin, flipped his loyalty to the Allies, has battled German U-boats off the south Atlantic coast, has sent supplies of iron and rubber to the United States, and in January began allowing the construction of US air bases on its northern coasts. Brazil’s involvement in the war is real, but Addy often marvels how he wouldn’t know it in Rio. Just as in Paris in the days before the war, here there is life and music. The restaurants are full, the beaches packed, the samba clubs pulsing. Addy wishes sometimes that he could disconnect, as the locals seem to be able to do – to immerse himself in his surroundings and forget about the war completely, the intangible world of death and destruction that lies, crumbling, 9,000 kilometres away. But as quickly as the thought enters his consciousness, he chides himself, inundated with shame. How dare he stop paying attention? The day he disconnects – the day he lets go – is the day he resigns himself to a life without a family. To do so would mean writing them off as dead. And so, he stays busy. He distracts himself with his work and with Eliska, but he never forgets.

  Addy pulls his letter from his back pocket, traces his fingers over his old address in Radom, thinking of his mother. Rather than imagine the worst, he has taken to re-creating his lost world in his mind. He thinks of how, on Sundays, the cook’s day off, Nechuma would prepare a family dinner, taking great care as she crumbled caraway seeds between her fingers over a hash of red cabbage and apples. He thinks of how, when he was little, she would lift him up every time they entered and left the apartment so he could run his fingers along the mezuzah that hung in the arched doorway to his building. How she would lean over his bed and kiss his forehead in the mornings to wake him, smelling faintly of lilacs from the cold cream she’d rubbed onto her cheeks the night before. Addy wonders if his mother’s knees still bother her in the cold, if the weather has warmed enough yet for her to plant her crocuses in the iron basket on the balcony – if she still has a balcony. Where are you, Mother? Where are you?