

### A FAMILY OF NO CONSEQUENCE

A Novel

Thomas M. Toler

#

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Thomas Toler

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Contact: toler7485@comcast.net

#

The dragon is by the side of

the road, watching those who

pass. Beware, lest he devour

` you. We go to the father of souls,

but it is necessary to pass by

the dragon.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem

# Table of Contents

A FAMILY OF NO CONSEQUENCE

Tolnici 1944

Vatra Dornel Romania, 1942

Southern Romania (Galati)

Vienna 1945

Sidi-Bel-Abbes Algeria, North Africa

Indochina l946

Sidi-Bel-Abbes 1947

Tolnici Village 1947

# A FAMILY OF NO CONSEQUENCE

The Ludovic road sought whatever flat surface it could find. The Hungarian engineers who build it three hundred years earlier avoided any ridge or saddle in its path. The result was a switchback pattern through the Carpathian lowlands, as if the road led to no certain destination. The month was May and the sun had already drawn all the moisture from the road surface, leaving a ribbon of dry white earth for those travelers in no apparent haste. The two boys turned onto a footpath that ran in parallel with the road and continued for some three kilometers from the village.

Cyprian was as exuberant as ever. "When I'm with girls, I can tell. I talked to her yesterday for only a couple of minutes, but I could see it in her eyes, she fancies me."

"You—and Irina?" Ethan swallowed twice to suppress his laughter.

"She tells me you and Ana are planning a little outing. This I like." Cyprian stood with his feet splayed like those of an expert horseman. His face, an oval of anticipation, suggested to Ethan that Cyprian regarded his knowledge of females as universal. "Ah, you know Ana," Ethan said. "One day I mention the clouds are lifting and suddenly she comes up with the idea of a picnic _._ A surprise! Now nothing will stop her until the hamper's filled."

Cyprian thought for a moment. "So here's what we do. You have Ana make lemonade, and my mother can put together some tongue sandwiches. I'll ask Irina. We can spend the day up in the orchard."

"A _day_ in the orchard?" My father has the north pasture ready for planting, and guess who he needs to help him? Besides, what does Irina think about this plan of yours?"

"What does it matter? She won't say no. And let's—"

Ethan raised his hand. "Listen," he whispered.

A low wail filled the air, instantly followed by another burst. Seconds later the sound fell to a wet wheezing before beginning again, this time at a higher pitch. They moved in its direction, stopping every few steps to orient themselves.

Cyprian labored to keep pace with Ethan. "I know that sound. _Grabeste-te_! Hurry!" The cart path swung to the northwest and took them in the direction of the Cosbus homestead. The anguished sound grew more distinct. The sound had become a bellows, sucking in the moist air and expelling it at a fevered pace. It seemed impossible that it could continue much longer. They found the animal near a copse of young beech trees. The ox lay on its side, a wooden yoke holding its head firmly in place. A puddle of saliva gathered beneath the head. A Roma boy or nine or ten struggled to release the traces to a field plow. Each repetition of the animal's breathing brought a burst of cries from the boy. Once the chains were slackened and the plow set back on its blade, the boy knelt near the animal's front legs. At first hesitantly, he ran his hand along the ruptured skin and paused for a moment before fingering the wet femur that now bent back on itself. He began beating his closed fist against his chest and glancing upward, imploring the heavens in a dialect Ethan found almost unintelligible. Blood began to pool around the boy's knees. The cry of the ox grew fainter.

The Gypsy boy appeared unaware of Ethan and Cyprian's presence and only lifted his head when he heard a man's voice beckoning. The figure closed the distance across the pasture in seconds and pulled himself to a stop beside the boy. He peered at the animal for only a moment. Arriving at some resolution known only to him, he raised his head as if refreshed at that moment. He lifted his tunic. A thick cord served as his belt, and between it and his trousers rested a pistol. Decision point now reached, he offered the weapon to the boy. The man barked a command and stood back. The ox began its lament again. The boy's chest convulsed at the command of his elder. He collapsed to a sitting position. His hands fell to the earth and the revolver came to rest beside his thigh. He turned and beckoned to Ethan. The boy grasped the gun by the barrel and reached for Ethan's hand.

"No!" Ethan's hands flew away from him, palms exposed.

The boy rolled to his knees, closed his eyes, and lifted his head for a moment. He placed the pistol within reach and clasped both hands in prayer. His head then fell to his knees as he moved the pistol inch by inch toward Ethan. It was a gesture of complete submission and Ethan was somehow moved by it. _All will be well,_ he wanted to say to the boy. _I'll comfort you. Here...see this? I have the pistol now. Stop your sobbing._

Ethan was not prepared for the elder stepping toward him, now gesturing that the pistol should be returned, that it had no business in the hands of a stranger. A calloused hand with two broken fingernails reached out. Cyprian immediately stepped in front of the man. Ethan circled around the pair and nodded to the boy. He closed his fingers around the trigger and stepped closer to the animal. A yellow eye rolled in his direction and attempted to focus on him. The revolver was a primitive firearm, a rusty cylinder with two cartridges in it. Ethan found it much heavier than he expected. He drew back several paces, grasped the pistol with both hands and attempted to raise it. The animal sensed the moment and began to bellow. The weight of the pistol seemed to draw Ethan's thin arms to the ground. His fingers became thick and leaden. The head of the ox floated in and out of his vision. He stood motionless, questioning for an instant if his fingers had somehow become trapped in the trigger housing. Cyprian's hand fell on his forearm, slipped over Ethan's inert fingers, and delicately withdrew the pistol.

Only one shot to the head was required. For some days afterward, Ethan cursed himself for believing that all living things harbored the spirit of God.

# [Tolnici  
1944](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

Usually by mid-afternoon the bombers appeared. No sound came from their engines. A soft contrail streamed in their wake. They flew at the top of the world.

At night he heard the chuffing of locomotives—faint for a moment—then growing louder when the wind shifted. He heard no human voices. Only the echo of iron upon iron. Despite the murmurs at midnight from his parents' bedroom or what Sandu said the wireless was reporting, Ethan continued to believe that no harm could find its way across an entire continent, seize upon Romania, then thread its way to Tolnici and the Itzkavitz homestead.

For his part, Cyprian appeared unaffected by the undertow of events. They stood on a small elevation on the eastern side of the village. Ethan turned once again to face the profile of the Carpathians.

"There."

Ethan pointed to a cluster of linden trees lifting their branches in the east wind, and then lowering them as if exhaling. A pause, and then the branches would lift again, undulating as the air passed beneath them.

Somewhere inside of him a pinpoint of joy erupted.

Cyprian laughed. "You're telling me the trees are sighing? Then I'll wait here until they sigh again—or raise their branches to eat or go piss in the corner." Cyprian shifted his hands to his hips, his customary stance of belligerence, and tapped his head with a finger. "What's that Yiddish word you use? G _oyishke kopf."_ He turned and began making his way down the trail, arms akimbo.

Ethan turned to the mountains again. A symphony. He could think of no other word to describe it. It was a composition of complete notes without sound. To hear it, to fully experience the breathing and the sighing of the trees, one had to rely on memory, on Sunday afternoons when there were no bombers, when the family sitting room filled with the sounds of the symphony house in Bucharest.

Of course he had never traveled to Romania's capitol. He would be the first to correct this impression in the minds of others, if anyone cared or had the time to think about any such things in the midst of war.

His village sat 200 kilometers north of Bucharest. A raw collection of wooden buildings and green cement, a place eroded by the passage of time. The small plot of harsh yellow grass where he stood gave no indication of centuries of invasion and subjugation. Armies of Turks, Hungarians and Bulgarians had once violated this ground, but he couldn't sense the imprint of these events upon his time and place. He saw only the insistent layers of mud, brown syrup on the road surfaces where rain and animal waste collected in small pools of water. Debris from the cart path painted each dwelling in a uniform layer of tobacco-colored residue. But as if to deny all this, the trees inhaled and the earth beneath them exhaled. Cyprian could not understand this because he could not hear the music.

Surrounding the human debris of the village was the "mittleland," a carpet of fruit trees, meadows and simple farm houses that unspooled toward the western horizon. The Carpathians cast a net of silence over the countryside. They absorbed the ugliness of the village and provided a curtain of protection.

He stood near the mythical setting for the castle of Count Dracula, the border region of Transylvania and Moldavia. _Dracula_ had been one of the first books he enjoyed as a child. The land surrounding Tolnici was described as wild and unknown by Bram Stoker. That observation confused him. Tolnici was all he had ever known.

He questioned if anyone in his family sensed things as he did. Although he would confess it to no one, he knew he had the ability to peel away surface appearances, to see the skull beneath the skin, yes—even the breathing and the music. He would not admit it to Teodor and certainly not Sandu, but he also believed he could foresee events. He had become aware of this just before his bar mitzvah. Some time before the modest preparations for the event, Ethan knew his father would present him with a gift to treasure. He couldn't bring the gift itself into focus, but he sensed that something unparalleled was in the offing.

The object itself had been beyond his expectation. A brass clip now attached the pocket watch to his trouser belt. Each time he opened the silver casing he sensed a silent reassurance. The casing itself carried an ornate filigree, and embossed on it were his initials. A small silver button at the base of the watch responded to his touch each time, allowing the casing to open without a sound. Black numerals marked the hours and a small aperture just beneath the numeral XII revealed the arc of the moon. The timepiece was a work of precision and beauty, and Ethan could find no words when his father presented it to him. Irina, his eldest sister, had stood to one side; Ana, a step behind as custom dictated. They listened as Ethan repeated Teodor's words.

I wear this Tallit for the first time today. The fringe with special knots on each corner serves as a visible reminder of the commandments of the Torah...

The day had been his, but try as he might, he couldn't draw much pleasure from the ritual. He shook his father's dry white hand but found himself wondering how Teodor had come upon the hundreds and hundreds of _lei_ required to purchase such a timepiece in wartime. The money could have been used to buy a battery and fuel for the tractor, or better yet, to travel into Iasi and buy the special salve for his mother's lower teeth.

To add to the cost, Teodor had arranged for Gamil the postman to record the event. Gamil turned up at every bar mitzvah or wedding in the village with his son in tow. He would prowl the scene like a field marshal while his helper fussed with the spider legs of the tripod.

Hours later when the wine had done its work, Gamil assembled the mitzvah guests at the side of the stone house, its western exposure providing a near perfect balance of light. "Ah, you all look solemn, so serious. Squeeze closer together...now, would a smile kill you?"

Ethan faced the camera and forced his dimples to appear. Irina always said they were what made him handsome.

* *

He excused himself early that evening and took to his room. He knew sleep would only come after evening prayers, and so he began with his opening ritual. He asked that God grant him more height. And more weight. And greater strength too. Little things, perhaps not as selfish as others, but worthy of attention: his blessings of faith and for a father who looked upon him as a promising scholar. And although he knew God would frown, he omitted his brother who had been indifferent to him for as long as he could remember.

I sought the Lord and he answered me and

delivered me from all my fears.

Look to him that you may be radiant with

joy and your faces may not blush with shame.

* *

The planting now complete, the longer days brought time for the men to sit, to exchange bits and pieces of the day. When the week turned to Friday prayers, Ethan's father became the leader. He prayed in the Hasidic tradition. He was not a rabbi, but his reverence for the Torah made him a figure of respect. Mihail, the tailor, would often visit and enter into emotional dialogues with his father, often at a depth Ethan could not comprehend. At other times, Mihail would sit silently and listen to the prayers, his lips opening and closing in perfect rhythm with the verse:

We praise you, Eternal God, Sovereign

Of the universe: You hallow us with your

Mitzvoth, and command us to kindle the

Lights of Shabbat...

Ethan closed his eyes in prayer and felt the familiar cloak of security. His country appeared to him unmolested by the outside world, and it was rare for anyone to travel beyond the neighboring villages. Only a fool would venture over the mountains. On the other side of the Carpathians lay a world charged in tumult and war. He often listened to Bucharest Radio with his brother. The broadcasts told of the Russian victory in Stalingrad and the mighty westward drive of the Red Army.

Sandu scowled. "Let them slaughter each other."

Ethan knew nothing of the world beyond the Carpathians but he wondered if there was somewhere beyond the grey peaks in the distance where Jews were living without fear.

* *

At planting time some months earlier, Dora had gathered Ana and him side by side on the kitchen bench, Ana's tan walking shoes dangling from the top of the rough wooden surface.

"I'm going to tell you about the Eye." Her voice dropped to a half whisper. "St. George's Day is coming. You'll have to stay inside with the shutters latched." She pointed to the calendar suspended over the iron stove. "On the twenty-third, the Eye will be very strong. It'll be looking for us. It's the stare of jealous people."

She added two spoons to the cutlery drawer and leaned towards them, her elbows settling gelatin-like on the stone countertop. "They think we have more than they do. They try to put the Eye on us so that evil can enter us. For now, your father and I'll protect you. Don't look at anyone with boils or rashes on their face. They'll stare back at you because your face is unmarked. They can put the Eye on you."

She adjusted the kerosene lamp. It burned with a new intensity. Ethan watched Dora's face blossom in the fresh illumination. "Don't look at priests or anyone in the streets with candles. They've given up all for God but they're still human and can be full of envy. They'll stare at you for a long time. If you meet their eyes, they'll fill you with poison, and you may die as a child, or if you don't, you'll never get married or have children."

Ethan was a disciplined reader and had concluded that overtures from the netherworld were the whimsies of field peasants, of those who knew no better. He had seen them in the village on market days. Dora said they carried the look of the fields in their faces. "Maybe in cheekbones or around their mouth or you'll see it smack in the middle of the eyes."

Poverty in every province, its signature on every face. Yet, his mother believed the folklore and observed the customs. Teodor had no time for it. With a smile, Ethan recalled the day his father spit to the side of the barn as Dora explained the precautions he must take for St. George's Day.

"During planting, you want us to sit inside with the windows shut?" Teodor drew up before her, eyes pinched as if she had insulted him.

She chose not to reply, but clapped her hands and squeezed his cheeks. "See, you spit! That means you're wet, not dry, and your substance won't attract the Eye. So when you spit, make the wet sound three times. Then envy won't dry you."

His father raised his arms towards the heavens and groaned, then strode out of the barn without a word.

For his part, Ethan thought the Eye might fulfill some ancient longing for safety. For lodgment that was secure, where fear could be held at bay. Even given that, did it have any place in a world of sleek bombers suspended in the sky and wireless broadcasts that could reach through the earth?

Still, he avoided the greeting of the village priest as he made his way to the bakery on Wednesday mornings. He looked instead at the cobblestones in front of him.

* *

For the elders gathered in the Itzkavitz home on Sabbath eves, the view was more circumspect:

"Why would Germans dirty their hands on us? They only care about the oil in Ploiesti. When they look east, they see the Russians." Mihail always preferred to be the one to launch a dialogue, and then become silent.

"It's not our land they want, it's getting rid of us! _That's_ what Antonescu wants. First they tell us that our citizenship is being ' _revised._ ' Then came the _Numerus,_ a fancy word I know, I know. But it all comes down to this—we don't have rights anymore, no citizenship, nothing." Isac spat to the side of the table onto the dirt floor. Ethan had heard the rumors about him. It was said he washed once a year.

"That's not all," a man Ethan knew only as Leca remarked. "This school teacher, Mirea, is poisoning their minds. He puts Gentiles on one side, our people on the other, then tells lies. Who knows what the kids believe?

The following Friday, the men once more took their places around the small wooden table at the Itzkavitz homestead. Radescu, a man known to cultivate prize turnips on his two-acre field, stood and raised his arms for silence. He spread a yellowed copy of a Yiddish newspaper on the table. "This is maybe a year old, but see what this Rabbi Niemenhower writes from inside Germany." The men gathered under the light and examined the page fragment.

First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

* *

Radescu drew the stem of his pipe along the block of print. "He's right. Someone has to speak out. Maybe it's already too late."

Ethan shifted in his seat. _Too late? Speak up father. You're the rabbi here. Do something._

Radescu hammered his heel to the floor as he spoke. Each movement brought a fresh cascade of dry mud down the side of his boots. Ethan glanced down the table and caught the odor of wet leather and saturated wool.

"The threat is much closer to home then Germany," Teodor said. "It's in Bucharest. Our _Conductator_ has thrown in with Sima and his street fighters. They roam the city like stray dogs." He paused for a moment and toyed with his reading spectacles as he spoke. He sat in a straight back leather chair, his generous girth resting against the edge of the reading table. A black yarmulke sat atop the crown of his head. Under it, ringlets of gray hair fringed his temples and ears. His voice carried a certain authority until it was interrupted by a fit of emphysema.

The men offered no comment. Ethan studied his father's face. Odd, that his father's left ear should have a larger lobe than the other ear. It seemed a hammered surface suitable for an earring, the ear of an old woman. Struck by the seeming profanity of such a thought, he turned to face his brother.

Sandu dozed by the fireplace. Ethan had long since concluded that his brother's indifference toward him stemmed from his belief that Ethan was the chosen one. His work as a pupil at what passed for a synagogue in the village found him to be quick-witted and curious, usually able to grasp the implicit meaning of a scriptural passage almost immediately.

Teodor, a man not easily given to sentiment, once remarked on Ethan's astuteness. "You have a lot to give. One day, you'll surpass your father. You'll become a student of Kabbalah." Sandu, on the other hand, seemed clumsy with any abstract topic. He much preferred the language of agriculture and how the next thirty days of weather might affect his cultivation of the family's barley and hay fields. A small crystal radio set provided his only entertainment. On most evenings he would sit silently and search the airwaves for a signal. When his mood became more congenial than usual, Sandu would offer the crystal set to Ethan and within a few sessions Ethan found the British Broadcasting Service. There, amid the static and wheezing, came the voice of the Prime Minister! Teodor's Yiddish dictionary was soon put to use. Ethan made it his goal to pick out one word in each broadcast that yielded a German-Yiddish equivalent. Teodor's modest library also carried a few texts in German/English translations. It was during these sessions that Ethan developed a halting familiarity with the English language.

At other times, Sandu seemed to have the upper hand in Teodor's eyes. As the number of the family's tenant farmers increased, Teodor devoted more time to Sandu. He instructed him in crop rotation, the mechanics of the irrigation system, and keeping the tenants' accounts. For a short time, Ethan held the idle thought that Sandu might call upon him for help. But there was nothing beyond a vacant glance.

Even in his later years, Ethan struggled with the conviction that Sandu gave nothing to anyone and expected nothing in return. He saw two male children, unequal in the attention they received from their father but equal in their lack of feeling for each other. At times, he wondered who would be first to aid him should a terrible accident strike. He knew Dora and his sisters would be at his side. Soon after his father would be present, preoccupied as always and delayed by arguments with meddlesome tenants.

As for Sandu, Ethan couldn't picture him responding with any degree of compassion. He imagined himself as a broken person, heavy on the ground after a chain link ruptured on the hay thresher. Before he passed out, he saw Sandu, unaffected and serene, driving the yellow tractor across the north pasture.

When the evening light began to fade, Irina moved through the sitting room with a slender taper. The men seated around the table did not acknowledge her as they waited for sunset. She nodded to Ethan as she moved silently by him. He reached to touch her sleeve.

She slipped by him with the suggestion of a smile.

* *

Ethan crouched for a moment and examined the small plot adjacent to the road sign: Iasi-5 km. The edge of the earthen plot had been carefully manicured and upon it rested a hand-carved case containing a wooden likeness of St. Lupescu, the patron saint of the region. The figure stood behind a primitive pane of colored glass. Ethan peered more closely. Red, yellow and magenta fringes of light illuminated the upright figure. The saint's eyes had not been applied by brush; the violet eyes were insets of polished glass. They had the look of eternity about them. Twilight soon gathered on the western horizon and Ethan watched as the small vault filled with particles of light.

He rose when he heard the bell sound from a distance. He glanced down the road and saw Irina's silhouette begin to emerge from the dry pasture land. She sounded the bell on the handlebar a second time and waved, pedaling effortlessly despite the incline that rose to where Ethan stood. At times a wooden irrigation spout would send a column of water into the air and Irina's figure would lose its definition in the shower of droplets.

All this came to him as a simple gift. That much he knew. Waiting for Irina to return from her clerk's window at the post office, her hair lifting in the breeze. He remembered thinking about it more than once and believing that nothing about it would ever change. Despite the dry season or the wet, the harvest or the war, he would always be there. And time would not confound the image of his sister atop her black bicycle, her silhouette aimed at his heart.

Irina circled her bicycle around him and an instant later was at his side, brushing his cheek with a kiss and touching his shoulder. She adjusted the strap of his backpack, cleared pine needles from the collar, and stood back to inspect her work. "What would you do without your sister to look after you?" She smiled, apparently now satisfied with Ethan's appearance. He saw no need to reply.

They began their slow return in the gathering twilight. If Ethan had walked the three kilometers to reach their rendezvous point, Irina would walk the return leg. Her bicycle idled beside her. Ethan was rarely as demonstrative as she. He seldom drew close to her or seemed capable of any overt affection. It was his way.

Two years separated him from Irina, but Ethan came to see her as much more than a young woman of 17. Her small frame carried an unmistakable fragility about it. If she had had wings, they would have covered bones that were porous and spider-like, seemingly lighter than the air that lifted her. But beneath the pale white skin that drew drum-tight across her arms and legs, a great physical strength somehow flourished.

It was Irina who could bound across the broken earth of a newly-plowed field, Irina who could follow the steam tractor in summer heat so intense that livestock stood locked in their tracks. And she could sing! Always another refrain. Ethan marveled at her, but was too embarrassed to think that she could excel at seemingly _everything_ she attempted. How could anyone with limbs like reeds move so effortlessly? Cyprian shared Ethan's admiration and seemed to possess a mystic ability to turn up at the homestead anytime Irina was outdoors.

To the north of their stone homestead stood a modest plot. It was Teodor's general purpose area, used for machinery repair and as a secondary grazing area. At one end, a hayrick had been erected. The lower beam of the apparatus was movable and Irina had fashioned a crude hurdle from it. When the long summer daylight gave them leisure time after field chores, she would draw her foot against a starting line she had marked in the soil. Then a moment to focus her concentration, a burst across the yellow grass, and a leap over the bar. Each week Irina elevated the bar. By month's end, the wooden bar stood as high as her shoulders. Some days later, Ethan took the first run and struck the bar. Then he watched as Irina silently floated over it.

"Should I raise the bar?" Irina asked.

"Of course."

He fixed the bar in his sight, determined to somehow time the liftoff of his left foot with his distance from the bar. How he would manage it didn't concern him. Despite being several inches shorter than his sister with his unwieldy assembly of arms and legs, he felt that simple determination would lift him over the bar.

His second attempt left his leg bleeding from contact with a sliver of wood protruding from under the bar. He struggled to his feet and heard Irina's laughter. Predictably, Cyprian was also on hand, admiring Irina and joining her in laughter.

"You are such a _golem_ ," Irina said. She poked at his shoulders and chest. "Look at you, I want to see some meat on those bones." Ethan shrugged, angry and embarrassed, but awed by the grace and strength of his sister. Irina studied his expression for a moment before she spoke.

"But you have other talents. Father says you sometimes see the future." Her voice fell to a whisper. "No one knows how you do it. Once you told me one of your big secrets—remember? And then your eyes flashed. Dora overheard you and she said your secret happened before we were born. I told Sandu. He said it was all true. How could you have known? Father thinks you could be a prophet."

"Maybe the trees tell him," Cyprian said. "He tells me he can hear them breathing, in and out, the way we do. I think he likes talking to trees better than jumping over them." Cyprian smiled and winked at Irina.

For a moment, Ethan was inclined to challenge him to lift _his_ heavy frame over the bar. Instead, he said nothing and set off for the house, anxious to bathe his wound and restore his sense of pride.

* *

The spring had been a time of surprises. The look of the mountains sometimes grew angry. They gathered the wind and battered it to the ground. Chimney smoke from nearby farms flowed sideways and the air became thick with cinder bits.

He waited.

Small zephyrs sprang up. They twisted the wind from the chimneys into faint helixes. Others idled along the surface of the fields and splayed the tips of the horses' tails.

He closed his eyes. The sun flared and painted a warm band across his forehead. He remained motionless and wanted time itself to stop. Right here and right now.

* *

Classes at Ethan's school continued, the pledge to Antonescu always beginning the day with a vapid regularity. Ethan proceeded with little expectation. Still, it came as something of a shock when he and his classmates were dismissed for recess a few days later. The playground area has been carefully cordoned off with yellow tape. A small rectangular portion of the otherwise expansive area displayed a crudely lettered sign: Jewish Children Only.

What were once energetic contests of soccer or tug of war now became an occasional opportunity for taunts. The Christian and Jewish children of Tolnici sensed that their families' religious practices now had much to do with their own level of safety.

"Lucky Jews! We don't make you wear yellow armbands or stars. We already know who you are!"

Another voice: "What's a kike?"

A small chorus responded: "A Jew with horns!"

Ethan heard the laughter. He studied the small assembly of flat oval faces and watched as the yellow tape danced in the wind.

Two sisters of the Leca family broke into tears. Cyprian scrambled around the area searching for something to throw at their tormentors. Ethan turned his eyes to their supervising headmaster. He stood smiling and silent among the Christian children, arms folded. On his way home that evening, Ethan noticed that the grocer no longer displayed his bright green peppers in the store window. Shortly thereafter, Adelman closed his store and offered no apology.

That evening Ethan sat with his father. Teo eventually responded to Ethan's silence. "Trouble at school?"

Ethan described the partition of the playground. He paused for a moment, unsure of how to ask the question. "What's a kike?"

"It means Jews, but not as human beings. It's full of hatred, the kind of ugliness that comes out in otherwise good people when Jews are mentioned. It's vulgar—blasphemy—never say it. Try to ignore these insults and live by the Torah. It's all we have."

* *

Each Wednesday afternoon, Nicholae Mirea taught European history to Ethan's class. His manner was normally placid, his attention on most days directed to the few Gentiles who offered some academic promise. On this particular afternoon, however, Mr. Mirea's demeanor had taken on a more energetic tone. Ethan sat and listened, idly drawing loops of blue ink at the top of his exercise pad. The boy beside him yawned and cupped his hands over his brow. Ethan smiled and watched as the boy's forehead rested against his hands for a brief moment and then began its slow descent along his forearms to the desktop. Just before contact, his chin pivoted forward and his head bobbed upright, his eyes blinking for a moment in the afternoon sun.

Ethan quietly placed his pen beside the tablet. He glanced over to his companion. Cyprian sat in stunned silence. The girl in front of his desk quickly folded her arms and drew her forearms against her ears.

Mirea's eyes glistened. His voice had now taken on a menacing tone, completely unfamiliar to Ethan. "You have seen the yellow tape behind the school that now marks the small play area for Jewish children? It's yellow for a reason. During the Middle Ages, it was the color of the wicked and the jealous. Listen to these words: Jew, Judas, and _jaune,_ the French word for yellow. Hear it? Now pronounce it after me. Say jaune."

He listened to the refrain and smiled.

"You must understand these symbols. They have much to do with the future of our country." And with that, he lifted the small bell on his desk and signaled the end of class.

Later that afternoon, only Christian children were active in a game of field hockey. The Jewish children rose at the sound of the bell and left the school without a word.

* *

The end of the week found the men gathered around the table at the Itzkavitz homestead. Teo asked his son to offer an opening prayer. Ethan began but stumbled soon afterward.

"Ethan?" His father's voice carried an edge of irritation. Ethan raised his eyes. "Answer me. What's troubling you?"

Before he could answer, Radescu interrupted with another question. Teodor raised his hand for silence. "Ethan, come." Teo pointed to his ear and nodded toward the onlookers. "They don't need to hear" he whispered.

"Yesterday in class Mr. Mirea said that our ancestors killed Christian children and used their blood during the Passover meal. How can he say that unless it's true?"

His father sighed and drew his hands apart as if he were offering a simple benediction. "Ethan, do you know the word 'calumny?' " Ethan shook his head.

"It means a false accusation, a big lie. It's not intended to be the truth. It's intended to incite non-Jewish people—particularly peasants—to hate us. After all, someone has to be blamed for all their difficulties."

"I didn't want to listen to him," Ethan whispered. "He made me feel...I kept thinking, I'm a Jew, I'm a Jew..."

Teodor straightened in his chair. "Don't be hard on yourself. You're young; you haven't had to deal with people who are filled with hate. Go now, but leave with God in your heart."

* *

That evening he turned to his scriptural reading and found relief in Leviticus:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, no soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood.

No, his father hadn't deceived him. This word "calumny," KAL-UM-NE. He repeated it to himself. It was the product of hatred. And the libels were the products of hatred. They couldn't be avoided, but they could be understood.

Ethan snapped off his reading lamp. Would they soon require us to wear a yellow symbol in public places? He decided that if it became law he would wear his emblem without shame. After all, he reminded himself, only one fear eclipsed that of being a young Jew facing the Iron Guard on the streets of Tolnici—and that was no longer being a Jew.

* *

The footpath led from the well to the open pasture. An apple orchard graced the north end of it. One tree had become his favorite, a gnarled renegade that stood outside the neat row of fruit trees. Its limbs had been fractured by winter winds and its bark sheathed in a broken surface of lichen. A lightning strike had left an irregular raw wound along its waist. Yet the tree bore magnificent fruit: apples that dwarfed the fruit of the adjoining trees, each one a whorl of yellowish red with firm juicy flesh inside.

When he returned to the house, Ana ran to him and pulled him up the stairs to the window. She unlatched both panels. "A perfect day. Father says he'll handle the chores. We can do what we want. You promised we'd have a picnic, just us." Ana had never been one to resist the simple pleasure of a summer afternoon, the air still fragrant with lilac, an idle wind stirring the trees.

While Irina's irrepressible spirit blossomed at surprising moments, her day to day demeanor was measured and purposeful. But Ana brought something more to Ethan's eyes: a restlessness that seemed inexhaustible. Even the long days and evenings of that summer did nothing to dispel her temperament. A leaking hand pump at the well became an object of fascination. How did the water form in the earth? How did the click-click-click somewhere deep in the spout bring water to the spigot? Could she help Sandu and Ethan repair it?

And for some reason known only to God, Ana's hands were always unblemished —-perfectly formed fingers tapering down to bright half-moons. His hands were hardly comparable, the skin on the back of his right hand already taking on the pattern of the roof of a dog's mouth. As well, Irina's were no equal. Alkili ink and wartime foolscap paper at the post office had taken their toll. To his eye, Ana brought a certain perfection, as if his flaws and Irina's had been swept away by the divine hand.

* *

By one o'clock that afternoon they had packed lunches of fresh meat sandwiches and two apples from his favorite tree and set off for the streambed. Ethan had carefully packed his fishing line and sinkers. For her part, Ana had brought an English children's writer whose stories had found their way into translation. Earlier, Dora had overseen their preparations. They set at once to their tasks, Ethan now reflecting Ana's glow of anticipation. They said little to each other as they worked. They went about the lunch preparations as if their actions were the result of a detailed discussion. To a casual observer, it would appear that one had somehow missed an entire conversation devoted to their activities for the day. The two children shared a sensory awareness known only to them. The rest of the family exchanged thoughts and feelings at a different level, a process that appeared far more rudimentary than what took place between Ethan and Ana. The unspoken word served a greater utility than the spoken word. No one seemed to have a satisfactory explanation or understanding of this dynamic; it simply became part of the fabric that stitched them together.

They reached the streambed as the sun was just beginning to reach its apex in a cloudless sky. Ethan drew a special pleasure from the marsh grass and the clusters of milk thistle. The area had been one of his haunts for several years. The water rushed from an upper pasture and followed the fold of a small ravine before it collected a few feet below in a shallow pool, sheltered by the overhanging branches of a colony of linden trees. He often waded in the water with his fishing line and felt the water sluice around his legs with a frigid eagerness. On languid afternoons, Ethan had seen farm livestock gather on the perimeter to lap the water. Occasionally, he saw a lone herdsman moving along the horizon. But on that day not another animal or creature could be seen.

After lunch, Ana rolled up the square tablecloth and returned it to the basket. A shaft of sunlight broke through the trees and Ethan stretched out beneath it. He heard Ana at the streambed.

"A fat salamander!" she called.

He nodded in her direction and smiled. His eyes closed without effort. This was a day that met his expectations. And he had been correct in his estimate of Irina's reaction to Cyprian's intentions. She had politely refused the invitation. Ethan could have taken some measure of pride in the way things turned out. Instead, he found himself thinking about how stinging the rejection must have been.

* *

A sudden coolness. He lifted his head and saw the wind urging gentle patterns across the streambed. The sun had moved behind the trees. He brought himself up to a sitting position, embarrassed that Ana would soon begin teasing him about being such a sleepyhead. But he heard no voice, felt no presence. Their picnic supplies rested where Ana had arranged them. Ethan rose and walked to the edge of the water, searching for her. He assumed that he had slept for something like an hour, giving her ample time to wander along the edge of the streambed. As he made his way toward the upper pasture, he noticed that the water pooled in certain areas along the steam's serpentine path. At one juncture the water appeared to be quite deep. He quickened his pace. "Ana? Ana! No more games—answer if you hear me!"

He continued searching as the shadows drew deeper. He cursed himself for his inattention, all the while hoping it would right itself when Ana appeared on the pathway. They would embrace and laugh and Ethan would urge her not to mention anything to Irina or their parents.

When darkness became complete, he called once more and then again, his throat pulsing from the strain. A lone grouse answered him from atop one of the surrounding pines. At once he turned and began heading back to the area where the path intersected with the roadway. One of Dora's proverbs intruded: _the fields have eyes, the woods have ears._ He tried to convince himself that he would find her; it would become nothing more than a whimsical episode, one that would surface in family conversations as the time Ana played a clever prank on her brother.

Ahead, two figures grew larger as they approached him. "Ethan!" Irina called. In a moment both she and Dora were at his side.

He stood before them, his shirt now fully saturated from his exertions, trousers slashed on both sides by bracken. He told them all he could remember. Soon Teodor and Sandu arrived and he recounted the events again as the moon climbed higher. Sandu listened and extended his hand. Under the milky beam of a lantern, he displayed a brass whistle and tested it so they would recognize the sound.

They divided into pairs and walked the wood line, then into the interior. Every ten minutes they could hear Sandu's signal. Each attempt brought only silence.

* *

The village knew nothing of Ana's disappearance until Iosef, a dairyman who made it his business to know everyone else's, learned from his daughter that Ana had not met her along the fence line in three days. The bars of the withered barrier had collapsed months ago and the opening allowed the children to cross from pasture to pasture. It was not unusual for the girls to meet there after school.

By nightfall, no living soul in Tolnici was unaware of what had occurred near the Itzkavitz homestead. Each day bought more conjecture: a drowning? Did she lose her way at the edge of the pasture just before it met the forest? A seizure by the Iron Guard? Or was it an act of violence by the only person who may have witnessed the events of the day—Ethan, the middle boy. "You know—the one who memorized entire chapters of the Talmud," Iosef said. "The dark-haired one who never played kick-ball with the other boys. Not once, mind you." Others referred to Ethan as the Solemn One.

Sandu and Ethan divided the next two days between daylight and darkness and continued searching. They surveyed the north end of the pasture several times, then combed the adjoining acreage of the Bantase family. The Rugas, located at some distance from the Itzkavitz homestead, readily consented to have their property searched as well.

* *

Precisely at noon four days later the Constable from Iasi presented himself at their door. He introduced himself and his deputy with a few words. The deputy seated himself to the left of the Constable, the position traditionally reserved for the person of inferior rank. The Constable appeared to enjoy the deference to his authority. He adjusted the button on his blue tunic and directed Ethan to face him at the parlor table. He asked the other family members not to disturb them.

Alone with two police officers? Ethan immediately signaled his father to intercede. Teodor sat without expression, acknowledging nothing. Irina rose quickly and was at the door before the Constable could object.

"Please." Her expression prevented any objection. "He's a fifteen year-old boy. He can't be held responsible for everything he says to you. Let me help." The Constable sighed and waved her into the parlor.

He drew up a chair opposite Ethan and positioned a picture of Ana on the table, one he had removed from a nearby bookshelf. Ana looked out at them in her cotton jumper, eyes wide, lips barely suppressing a smile.

"When did you last see her? The truth, please."

"In the north pasture. I usually went there on my own. Only this time Ana insisted on coming."

"You get on well with thiser girl—your sister?"

"She's the youngest in the family. She depended on me."

The Constable sat without interest. His eyes were small beads behind thick spectacles; he spoke a glottal dialect from beneath an unkempt moustache. The cuffs of his blue uniform jacket were deeply soiled. They rested on the table top, perfect circles of matted decay.

Now and then he glanced over at his assistant, assuring himself that all of the questions and responses were written precisely as he directed. "So she just up and vanishes, eh? Anyone in the village want to harm...er, her name again?"

"Ana." _Does this man from the police think she is injured or dead?_ _That she will never be found?_ "I can't think of anyone."

_Si de tine_? "What about you?"

The assistant stopped writing and studied Ethan. The constable sat back with his arms crossed over his chest and attempted a smile. "You can tell me. I grew up with two sisters. We fought and argued all the time. My older sister was a little wildcat, she could beat anyone wrestling. I remember it all too well. I was mad she was stronger than me. I wanted to get back at her. "You don't look all that strong, maybe she made you look ridiculous in some of your games and you—I don't know—hit her with something. I almost did the same a lot of times. It could happen like this." He snapped his fingers. "Action, reaction. It's possible, no?"

Before Ethan could gather his composure to answer, the Constable expanded his logic. "Or maybe she somehow fell and hit her head or stumbled into the water, you might have panicked and decided to hide everything for the moment. A freak accident-that sort of thing. I see it all the time. Maybe it wasn't even your fault."

Irina leapt to her feet. "That is crazy. Why in God's name would Ethan—"

The constable shook his fist at her. "Did I ask you for an answer? I'm talking to him." He recovered for a moment, eyebrows raised, thick fingers drumming on his generous stomach. He turned once again to Ethan. "You can tell me. I'm your friend. Better let it out now than wait for an investigation. Jews should leave nothing to doubt. The police and the courts, they're not too kind to you people."

Ethan felt his chest compress and a band of perspiration exude from his spine. The small room where they sat suddenly was shorn of light and color. Only the squat brown table where the constable's arms rested seemed real. The policemen's faces were framed in black and white. In an instant, the color had bled from them.

Irina turned to the police officers. "These things might be possible with someone else, but that didn't happen here. If you knew Ethan and Ana, you wouldn't think of them in a criminal way."

Ethan studied the raw black stubble along the constable's chin. This man in the soiled blue uniform was an outsider. He didn't come from their village. He had traveled from Iasi. He was full of lies. "My sister is telling the truth. She knows me."

"We've been searching every day," Irina said. "All of us. Ethan hardly sleeps." "We need you to keep looking, to go farther than we can, at least a few kilometers outside our village. And the Guard patrols? They hunt our people down."

The constable ceremoniously closed his notebook. He gestured to his assistant. "We walked through the pasture where you claim to be when you last saw her, and we found nothing. The two of us are the only police for all of southern Moldavia. And you want me to keep looking for a Jew girl? As for the Guard, they ignore us and we return the favor." The constable reached for his cap. "I'll take your sister's word for it that you did no harm. Perhaps only the Guard knows for sure."

Irina rose and circled the table. She paused for a moment until she had the full attention of the police officers. "Sir, I am asking for the family that you not take my word for it. Don't walk away. We ask that you do your own looking into things. A one-hour walk through the pasture and you have the answer? Is that enough? And the Guard? They would never help us. But if you..."

"Sit down, Ruth, before I arrest you!"

_"_ My name isn't Ruth." She remained standing.

"To me, all Jew women are Ruth."

He signaled his assistant. Minutes later, the pair disappeared in their blue Gaz sedan.

It was then that Ethan felt the hot wash of tears for Ana, for himself, and for all those who cannot recover what they have lost.

* *

He slept fitfully that night. At one point, he lifted a taper to the candle and checked his mitzvah watch: 3 a.m. The dawn brought no respite. He raised the shutter and what came into view were figures moving through the fields, swarming in some places and diffusing in others. It was impossible to see if they were men or boys. Their faces were shorn of any features. Their clothing appeared to be that of peasants. Yet, where sleeves should have been were young shoots of linden bark streaming from their arms as they raced toward a destination known only to them and in their aftermath came the scent of wet hay and cattle urine.

From somewhere came the report of a rifle and the cry of an animal. Ethan fought his way to wakefulness. A second shot...a pause. Then a third.

Sandu signaled to him from their window. Below, the band of intruders linked together, smiling and acknowledging each other. One young man—a youth no older than Sandu—held his rifle aloft as the others offered praise. Behind him lay the carcass of a sheep dog, its hind leg attached to a length of rope. Sandu pointed to one of the men now visible in the half light. "That's Stanescu from Iasi. He has no business here, he's—" Sandu stopped in mid-sentence and stepped away from the window. Moments later, Ethan watched as he approached the roadway. Sandu pointed to the man he recognized, now plainly visible. "Stanescu—yes, you! You know me. Itzkavitz, of this village." Stanescu turned to the sound of the voice but acknowledged nothing.

Sandu stood a full head taller than Stanescu. His 12-hour workday during spring planting had hardened his back and shoulders; his forearms, thick and drawn tight by the demands of the field, were flecked with the champagne color of the sun. He appeared capable of pouncing on his visitor at any moment. Stanescu grasped a necklace of leather cups suspended around his neck. He aligned the necklace before Sandu's eyes and slowly tipped the contents onto his boots. From behind him came muted encouragement and laughter. Stanescu appeared to enjoy the performance. He drew back with a flourish and spat at Sandu's feet.

" _Evreu_ ," Jew. He raised his index finger and pointed to the base of his skull. With that, he turned and signaled the group. They fell into step behind him and Sandu was left where he stood. Within minutes, the men dissolved into the surrounding fields.

Teodor waited for them as they entered the house. Ethan, Irina, around the kitchen table, please." Teodor's face drew tight, his eyes on Sandu. "We have to get used to this. The Iron Guard? Those cups of dirt around their necks are supposed to say they're sons of Romanian soil." He shook his head. "They're criminals. They owe everything to Antonescu. He unlocked the jails."

He fell silent and grasped Dora's wrist.

"Keep talking" she said. "The children need to hear this."

"Listen," Teodor said in a low voice. "We're a small Jewish family in an unprotected village. We must do as they say. This war can't go on much longer. But in the meantime, we have to submit." Sandu seemed about to say something, but Teodor put a hand on his shoulder. "It's not in our tradition to respond with violence. We pay homage to _Yahweh_ , a just God. In His eyes, we're a people of reason. You were wise not to strike back at Stanescu.''

Sandu blinked. "Ha! I had no choice. To hell with wise. I thought they were going to shoot me." He flushed. "What are we supposed to do? Let those dogs run around as they please, beg them not to hurt us. Oh please, Mr. Stanescu sir, here is my house, you can kick down the door, if you wish, you can shoot my animals. Oh yes, please take our daughters too." He pressed his fist to his forehead and swore to himself. "There is a word for this."

"Appease," Ethan said.

"Yes, yes—to stand and watch while they shoot our dogs and spit at us?"

Teodor pulled himself upright. "There are other ways. The Torah says we should be tolerant. Why would they raid a small farming village? Our neighbors grow potatoes and livestock. Sandu, you and Ethan are sons of Romania. Your mother runs a small fabric shop. We're a threat to no one."

# [Vatra Dornel  
Romania, 1942](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

A Prayer to Saint Michael

Defend us in the day of battle

Be our protection against the

Wickedness and snares of the devil;

May God rebuke him we humbly pray

And do thou O prince of the heavenly host

Thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits

Who wander though the world

Seeking the ruin of souls.

* *

The man from the government office stood beside Ion's father. They braced themselves against the west wind. The field had turned its face to the winter sun. But Ion had long ago heard its death rattle. Now everything was barren and wet with dew. Nothing would dry out in the cold. Every living thing had been cut down, sickled and baled. Only the weeds still stood, sodden to the roots.

The government man listened as the elder Stanescu cursed the conditions that had led to the family's bankruptcy. "Will this depression every end?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Will we ever return to having enough _lei_ to spend on crops and horses? What I would give to be able to buy one _...just one_ mare to pull the plow. But I've no money to buy livestock. I can't buy farm tools because our country doesn't produce them. Buying foreign tools is out of the question. I have no crop. Even so, I can't export grain because there's no demand for our cereals. Usually we could get credit from some of the merchants to carry us from one harvest to another. Then came the drop in grain prices, no one could pay their debts. The banks have no money. The lenders refuse to speak with me." He turned to his son, knowing he may not comprehend the full import of the Stanescu family's circumstances.

"One year ago the government tells us to hold back our wheat from the market. So we gather together in the valley and we say yes, we will hold back our crop. We will wait until the price rises again. Six months later, the government tells us that the price is now dropping too rapidly and we must go to market at any price to avoid not being able to sell the harvest. Ion, look over to the east side of the pasture. You see our silo? It is filled with our wheat crop. By the time I made my intentions known at the markets it was too late. Now it rots away, the only mouths it is feeding are those of the rats."

The government man stood unblinking and silent.

Now addressing only himself, Sladec Stanescu offered his own testimony to a way of life now soured by corruption, greed and ignorance.

"There are other rats at work as well. They are the kike money lords, the fat Jews who practice usury and have driven us onto worthless land. Look at this barren field! The remains of the crop lie like corpses. We can't allow this to continue."

The only hope of economic reform and recovery in his view lay in the Legion of the Archangel Michael, a worship rite in the church now converted to unflagging nationalism, solidarity with workers and an end to Jewish domination of land ownership and finance.

"The Legion offers us only ugly choices, but there are no other choices," his father said.

In less than three years, the Legion embarked on several assassination attempts of Jewish leaders and had since renamed itself the Iron Guard. The Guard pledged to prevent communism from disturbing the rural traditions in the countryside and to reverse the economic decline that had become so widespread.

Stanescu's home, which he shared with six brothers and sisters, stood as a testament to their bleak economic circumstance. The house was a single story affair build of wood and clay, the floors a mixture of dirt and cow dung. Twelve hour days in the fields had been the only means of realizing a harvest.

The fascist movement in Romania gained momentum by blurring the reality of the country's grinding poverty and instead emphasizing National Solidarity and hatred of anything foreign. As Ion Stanescu came of age, the symbol of the Iron Guard—-a swastika reversed on itself—-began to appear in pastures and fields. Like the brown shirts of their allies in Germany, new members of the Guard were soon identified by their green shirts and diagonal leather chest straps. Leather boots and caps were also issued to young recruits. In Stanescu's case, they became the only articles of clothing that had not been worn by an older brother or sister.

Guard members circulated through the villages providing shelter for children whose families could not afford to keep them, serving hot meals in Guard canteens and promising land reform and the availability of farming equipment. On the heels of these humanitarian measures, the Guard leadership began an active propaganda campaign which sought to clarify the ancient bloodline of the Romanian people. The Guard proclaimed itself to be made up of direct descendants of the Dacian people. The Dacians were a people of advanced material culture. Such an appeal to one's ancestry implicitly excluded all those who were not of Dacian descent. Jews and gypsies soon came to be seen as outside the first circle, as the filthiest of all races.

In turn, the _Conductator_ , General Ion Antonescu, came to be identified with the racial purity ideal of the Romanian people. A man not afflicted by modesty, Antonescu presided over a personality cult that regarded him as the soul of the Romanian nation. The racial theory of the time claimed that the Roman colonizers were not of Italic origin. We must not forget, the Guard reminded its recruits, that the Dacian element has a superior range as compared with the Latins in the racial structure of the Romanian people.

At one of the first rallies Stanescu attended as a young recruit, a speaker proclaimed that Dacian space represented the most important racial reservoir in the Aryan world. Under a pulpit overshadowed by the flags of the German Reich and the Iron Guard, the speaker accused the Jews of exploiting Romania to a much greater degree than the Romans and that they had done so since 397 A.D. A spotlight fell in the speaker. The lights in the tent fell dim as he stepped before a screen of lantern slides under the title "The Eternal Jew".

The speaker was said to be a colonel in the Romanian Army who had taken part in the massacres at Transnistria. As he spoke, he shed any pretense of objectivity and began his narration of the black and white images appearing on the screen:

Frame: A Jewish street scene somewhere in Poland.

"The Jews live in unsanitary conditions. They are not used to working. They wish only to barter...to trade. They have no place in a modern industrial state.

Frame: Separdic jews at work with a crude abacus.

"Jews are attracted to money. They practice usury with no regard for the law or the needs of other races. They seek to loan money only to other Jews. This practice is what has led to widespread inflation in many countries.

Frame: A map of the Middle East and Palestine.

"They believe they are the sons of Israel. No other peoples are deserving. No other faiths are recognized. They seek a home in the Middle East and to rule the area as the Romans once ruled here."

Frame: Encirclement—a map of the European and North American continents with intersecting lines between capitol cities.

"Look at the Jew concentrations in Paris, New York, London, Warsaw and Vienna. See how they link together. They unite not to improve our economy, our standard of living...no—-they unite to form a web of international influence.

Frame: a pack of rats scurrying along the base of a curb, then disappearing into a sewer grate.

"Think about what we must do. We are being overrun by vermin. ..and what do responsible societies do when vermin threatens their very existence? They exterminate the vermin and save themselves."

It became an elementary matter for Stanescu, now 20 years old at the time his company of Guards began moving south, to fulfill his duty. No race could compete against the Romanian bloodline. No one could question the wisdom of the _Conductator_ and his courage. No Christian teaching contradicted the fundamental guilt of the Jews, the very people who were the murders of his God. Stanescu's formal schooling lasted only five years. He hadn't mastered reading or writing. In fact, he was a poor student. He couldn't be expected to understand that once human nature had been awakened to violence and slaughter, it would not be difficult to find victims or put them to the sword.

But he readily understood that the Jews—whose rabbis were said to keep secret surgical knife sets for the dismemberment of Christian children—deserved all possible suffering.

* *

The Itzkavitz brothers sat at the kitchen table. Dawn was only an hour or so away and without discussion, they had decided to simply wait until Felix, the family's resident rooster, announced the start of a new day.

Sandu was the first to hear the sound. Muffled voices outside the house, then a flurry of fists at their narrow wooden door. He drew back the shutter and saw the soldiers in the roadway, some pulling at doors as they progressed, others using the butts of the rifles to gain entrance. Families were hurriedly formed into loose ranks in the street, most of them still in their night clothes. Elsewhere latches on livestock pens were smashed, and animals began to wander uncertainly. Irina fled down the stairs, rubbing sleep from her eyes and wanting to know the cause of the mayhem.

Teodor looked out on the street. He held a small lantern. It cast enough light for Ethan to see that his father's lips were moving in silent prayer.

An instant later heavy footsteps erupted in the downstairs sitting room. A young man stood for a moment at the bottom of the wooden staircase. He wore the green shirt of the Guard and scaled the stairs effortlessly.

"Out! Out!"

Dora stood on one side of the doorway, frozen in the half light. The young man seized Teodor by the arm and pushed him toward the stairs. He turned to Irina who immediately began to retreat to a corner of the room clad only in a nightdress. He tore the garment from her shoulder, swiftly seized her ear and led her to the doorway.

Sandu shot forward to block the doorway and was brought to one knee by a blow from the young man's oak baton. Ethan stood motionless as the youth began to sweep the blunt instrument from side to side.

"Line up in the street. Do as you're told." With that, he strode to the door, not for a moment releasing his grip on Irina's ear lobe.

The fog had not yet lifted. In the morning chill stood five ranks—Tonia, the young assistant from the bakery; Isac, who delivered the milk each morning; the Bantase family; and in the rear rank the elders, fastened to the moist earth in stony silence. The hasty round-up had not discriminated. A few Gentile families were caught in the net, including Cyprian and his father. Beside them, the Ruga family elders protested their arrest, but their Semitic features seemed sufficient in the guards' eyes.

Stanescu observed the seizures and nodded in approval, then took a robust pull on his _slivovitz._ He drew the back of his hand of his hand over his mouth and watched as two of his men moved through the ranks, a large straw basket between them.

"Put all jewelry and watches and rings in the basket, and the Guard'll thank you. Try to hide anything, and you'll learn a few things."

The basket slid by Ethan, filled with scraps of family memories: an engagement ring, several lady's hair braids—one with a small stone set in it— several combs of no value whatsoever, a child's play watch, a small box camera.

A young soldier reached Irina and thrust the basket at her. She did not meet his eyes; she moved only to gather her nightdress around her shoulders in an effort to ward off the chill. Ethan watched as she inadvertently shook, her limbs seemed to rattle in their sockets. She presented a vulnerable figure, already alternating between shock and disbelief. The soldier paused for a moment before her, his head cocked to one side, eyes sweeping over her exposed shoulders.

Stanescu passed in front of the rank where Ethan stood. The tang of accumulated sweat and plum wine followed him. He moved quickly to face Sandu.

"You're an Itzkavitz?"

Before Sandu could answer, a truncheon flashed forward and struck. He fell instantly, gasping for air. Dora cried out and slumped against her husband.

Stanescu faced Ethan. "And you?"

Ethan didn't raise his eyes. "Yes."

He watched as Stanescu's right hand caressed the black leather cap of his truncheon. His thumb sat atop the weapon, the thumbnail lost to some mishap. A star-shaped cluster replaced it, giving the appearance of a counterpunch imprint.

Stanescu stepped away for a moment. Ethan remained motionless. Sandu began to claw his way back to where Ethan stood. Stanescu turned instantly, stepped over Sandu and faced Ethan. He cupped his chin in his hands.

Ethan raised his eyes to Stanescu, already anticipating a lighting strike to the head. How long, he wondered, before the stab of pain dissolved into unconsciousness?

Stanescu smiled. Using his rifle as a brace, he centered himself on Ethan's face.

"Your name?"

"Ethan. Ethan Itzkavitz."

"Another Itzkavitz! This one a little more respectful. Are you proud of your family?"

Puzzled, Ethan nodded in agreement.

"Then we'll take pictures so the whole world can see your pride." Stanescu spoke loudly enough so that his words were not lost on the assembly. He had remembered the Itzkavitz family all too well.

A guardsman unstrapped a camera from his pack and pushed it into Ethan's hands. Stanescu abruptly pulled Ethan forward. He moved to the end of the row and motioned for Irina to come forward. She did not move. His sergeant had completed his collection of valuables. Stanescu pawed through the basket and selected a wrist watch. He raised his head for a moment.

"And the father of this proud Jew family, where is he?"

Teodor passively identified himself. He too was wrenched forward.

Stanescu pointed to Irina. "Bring her here!" Another accomplice lowered his rifle barrel into her ribs. Irina shuffled forward. She faced him now, her jaw set in an expression of icy defiance.

"The old Jew Itzkavitz will stand in front of you. He will not look away. The boy Jew will take pictures." Two women held Dora protectively.

"The mother? Ah yes, bring her here." He positioned Dora and Teodor side by side.

"Don't look away." He brandished his truncheon in front of their faces, and then held them in his line of vision as he backed toward Irina.

Stanescu tore away her nightdress in a single movement. He stood for a moment admiring her and nodding. He began to circle her and as he did so he unbuttoned his green shirt and loosened the cups from around his neck. He dropped his shirt to the ground and snapped the suspenders from his shoulders. A moment later his trousers fell over his spattered boots. Crablike, he encompassed Irina. "Hold her!"

Ethan's father began murmuring a prayer,

Oh God Lord of the universe,

Take pity on us in thy great mercy...

* *

Irina hissed and raised a pale white foot in defense. Two soldiers held her wrists. One of them was the adolescent who had stormed their dwelling only minutes earlier. He could not take his eyes away from her. Only once did he glance at Stanescu. He muttered words of encouragement as Stanescu's fingers coiled around Irina's hips.

Stanescu glared at Ethan. "Jew boy! Pictures!"

Ethan raised the camera. The lens swam past the onlookers and locked on two figures, now fused in the morning sunlight. A cry of anguish, unlike anything Ethan had ever heard, rang out. Ethan stood motionless for a moment then turned away. The guard seized his shoulder and turned him toward Irina. A fit of blindness and paralysis seemed to come over him. He wanted no control of his vision or arm movements.

"Now, now!" Stanescu shouted.

The guard thrust the muzzle of his rifle behind Ethan's right ear. He turned to face the two figures, now thrashing on the ground. He dutifully pushed the shutter and wound the advance. He captured each movement.

Stanescu pulled away, a look of triumph now apparent. He motioned for one of his confederates to take his place. Another young soldier stepped forward, the one who had been first at their door only minutes ago. He fumbled with his trouser belt in his excitement.

Ethan looked away. Another muffled sound from Irina, and Ethan resumed his task. A moment later he tasted the bile in the back of his throat.

Then they were finished. He returned the black box without a word. His first thought as Stanescu dismissed him was thankfulness that he had not been harmed.

It was only after some time that a full sense of loathing entered his thoughts. Fear had found him a suitable host. It was deep inside him now, nourishing him as he watched his sister become a feast for the jackals.

* *

A Sabbath evening. They had returned to their home sometime during the day. No one was certain of the hour. Irina had not left her room since the assault. Dora moved silently between the kitchen and Irina's upstairs bedroom, carrying food trays and returning with a basket filled with stained dressings. She said nothing and only occasionally met Teo's questioning glance. Two neighbors appeared at the kitchen entrance and disappeared just as quickly after murmuring words of edgy condolence.

Teo sat in his customary chair. His prayer books remained closed. He sat rigidly, only his fluid lips betrayed any sign of awareness. Ethan knew the prayer. He watched his father's gray face as the silent chant continued. On so many evenings his father had led him in the supplication:

Praised be the Eternal God who frees the captive,

Praised be the Eternal God who lifts up the fallen...

But there the familiarity now ended. The prayer had now become something he despised. This man sitting adjacent to the kitchen seemed a stranger, the chant vacant. Ethan could not come to terms with why his father had been unable to act, unable to protect Irina. Sandu had at least attempted to prevent the assault.

For him, there may have been some explanation. Until the moment when the camera was pushed toward him and the guardsmen encircled Irina, he had no understanding of how or why a man would attack a woman using the same means by which he would produce a child. The act of rape was unknown to him. How the union of a man and woman could be twisted into an act of great pain was beyond his comprehension.

Ethan knew that it was not his place to question his parents. But he refused to be submissive. Why had their world suddenly been seized by the Guard? All the prayers they offered for their deliverance. Had they protected Irina? Or led the way to Ana? And if the men in the green shirts return, who will defend us? He had no answers.

Still, he could not avoid the sense of betrayal over what had happened. It was _his_ betrayal. Irina's cry had pierced his heart, yet his sole reaction had been the careful focusing of the camera and the overriding desire to avoid Stanescu's truncheon.

Was Sandu the only one with any sense of strength and honor?

And what of his father? Could he have spoken out? Surely his humiliation was easily as great as Irina's. Was it not his father who only weeks ago had agreed with the words of Rabbi Niemenhower on the cost of not speaking out? Or were the crimes of the Iron Guard simply a convenient point of debate after Friday prayers and a good meal?

Never before had he any reason to doubt his father's capacity for good, to see the core of goodness in all he touched. Now Ethan questioned if Teodor was capable of countering evil. And if the answer to that question was no, then Ethan would be the son of a weak man. And why be surprised at that admission? He could share the same trait. After all, he had accepted the camera and done what he was ordered to do. And his father had done what Ethan expected him to do. Precisely nothing.

And for himself? Where had this life of great promise in his father's eyes, this ability to recite sacred text without hesitation—where had they led him? He sat without a sound, his hands flattened under his thighs. He had settled into the posture without thinking. He didn't have to be reminded that it was his characteristic pose of dejection. No one had to look at him to know that his failures had led to reprisal for Irina and Ana. Both sisters would never be the same again.

And now with Irina broken, someone must turn to Ana and do what must be done.

Sandu was the first to speak after the meal. "I picked up some shortwave earlier...the Germans, they're stalled on both fronts." He paused and cupped his hands around his forehead. "The armies from the west are days away from Germany. The Russians are going toward Berlin. The Russians or Americans will be on our doorstep any day..."

The pauses between his brother's sentences, his obvious difficulty in linking his words appeared like some kind of brokenness emerging in his behavior, a separation between a thought and the ability to express it.

The truncheon had done its work. Ethan would not soon forget the sound of it. A silent arc as the baton flashed toward Sandu's right temple, a thick concussion when it made contact with his skull, fragments of blood and flesh reeking like old iron.

Cyprian offered his version of events. Having come to visit Irina and been refused —Dora shook her head, it was not a good time—Cyprian asked for a private moment with Ethan. They sat on the railing that once served as the high jump bar.

Ethan gave his account of the confrontation with Stanescu and how all three Itzkavitz men had failed to resist. "Sandu in the dirt with a gash in his head. And me, standing there with the camera and a big spot where I wet myself."

Cyprian stood and faced him. "You did nothing but go along with him? What good are you to anybody with your head split open? What did I do? I turned away when they stripped her, but just before that I saw Stanescu face you. His arms are as thick as your legs. Stop blaming yourself."

Ethan's obligation was unmistakable, but his resolve wavered. Cyprian waited for a response. Ethan searched for an exit, either real or imagined. He studied the shadow of his small wheelbarrow. It stood upended just where he had left it, its wooden spokes veined green with age. The stone flower pots he had precisely arranged around the wheel now spilled in all directions. And there—the stone pathway he had built three years earlier. It eventually wound its way to the general purpose area, but in the early years had served as a hop-scotch pattern for Ana. Six stones on the eastern end cut and fitted by him in one day. Not one had shifted in six years. Around the circle of the largest stone were his initials and Ana's.

Cyprian stood as Dora entered. Ethan turned to him. "I need to talk to her alone."

He could restrain his anxiety no longer. Dora listened with her customary forbearance. "Ethan, no one can ignore the mind of God. Be thankful for small things. He's helping us stay here in Tolnici. Just over the mountains the fascists took a whole village away to the work camps. They're evil places, as cruel as the ones in Germany."

Her words did nothing for his spirits. "And this man who attacked Irina—what about him?"

"Stanescu? A local thug. With God's help, the authorities will arrest him. Beads around the neck and a devil in the heart, I say. God will judge him, not us—and not you, Ethan, do you hear me? Stay away from him. Your father wants us to forgive him." She turned away for a moment. "I was with Irina after the Guard left. I searched and searched for the answer. Then Irina and I prayed for him to die."

Ethan grasped her shoulders and drew his face close to hers. "I can't forgive him either. And I can't wait. He should... he _must_ suffer just like Irina. How could God not have heard her cry?"

"Ethan, you're hurting me."

He let go and stepped back. "Please answer me."

"Your father warns that we can't question the will of God." Her voice faltered. Ethan glanced into the kitchen at his father, immobile and silent in his chair. "You think he knows the will of God?"

"Ethan, there are no answers," Dora said. "The world has gone upside down. Sandu got the club. Do you want to be next?"

"Ana depended on me. Still depends on me."

"Oh, now my youngest son is going to avenge his other sister? Do want to destroy us all?" She studied his expression and abruptly pressed 50 _lei_ in his hand.

"No, I don't want it."

"My profits from the shop," she said. "Take it. Protect yourself."

* *

How to begin? Peel away the surface. Look for the last traces of her. A search through her bundles of sketches, perhaps a small journal or a diary secreted away. Unlikely sources, but certainly not beyond possibility.

Her bedroom. It took up an inconspicuous space on the upstairs landing. The small cubicle lacked any windows and the metal roof above it drummed with the sound of wind and rain on winter days. Ethan found the room confining and airless.

But Ana? No, she never complained. He knew she saw the room as welcoming and considered herself fortunate to have the downstairs fireplace chimney thread through her sleeping area. On more than one occasion he would look in to check on her and find her curled up against the warm bricks, book in hand. Her book collection—modest though it was—stood in perfect symmetry along the splintered surface of a discarded plank that served as her bedstead.

His glance fell on the bookshelf and he remembered. Her favorites remained those she had first read as a child—the tattered set of British story books. Ethan could picture Ana settled behind the " _Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies."_ He touched the tattered spine and withdrew it carefully from the shelf. A small world atlas, more of interest to her now at the age of fourteen, stood beside it.

The book fell open in his hand. He saw Peter and Flopsy scampering to safety once again in Mr. McGregor's garden. Ethan settled on one of the pages, for a moment recalling how Ana would marvel over how Thomasina Tittlemouse had so skillfully rescued Peter Rabbit's family. The books spoke to an illusion that Ana favored even as she matured: ordinary animals who could speak and understand, endearing creatures who lived close to the ground and became vulnerable each time they left their warren. But Ethan knew it for more than that. They appealed to her because they loved one another. They cared for each other. Their hearts were at the center of their small universe. Among the family's scant collection was a three volume set of Romanian fairy tales, books Dora had treasured as a child and passed on to Ana as an acknowledgment of her mastery of reading.

"Ethan, do you know about the golden stag?" It was a question—perhaps more of an overture—that Ethan came to know all too well. He was expected to put down his book and respond to her that no, he didn't know of the golden stag. He had been asked the very same question countless times, but it didn't matter. He enjoyed the theater of it all.

Ethan never tired of hearing of the children who became lost in the Galicea Forest. He understood that it brought great happiness to Ana when she drew her woolen blanket around her ankles and described the dark passages of the forest. Ethan listened attentively, not because he wanted to hear once more of how the little boy who drank the poison had become a stag. She was at her happiest when she recounted the story again and again, and that was enough for him.

He slipped the page between his thumb and forefinger, looking for the slight ink blemish that marked where Ana's finger rested as she held the book. She had begun making cryptic notes next to the illustration that depicted the Fischof children in the Great Forest, abandoned by their father and desperate to find the pathway that would return them to their home and their loving father. At this turn of events, the reader knew that the children's new stepmother was the source of a vexing influence upon their father and it was she who had coerced him into abandoning the children. Abandonment lies at the heart of childhood fears and Ana was not left untouched by the imagery of the lost children. She had carefully inked in her concerns in the margin:

**They will** not **find the path home. They must be found before they die in the forest**.

He studied a series of tiny dotted lines. They threaded in and around the forest. In the margin, her crisp black letters:

Take water and food.

Do what the children did not do.

Do not drink the forest water.

Don't let them die!

A small rectangle of blue and white school tablet floated to his feet. Ana had carefully transcribed a map of southern Moldavia onto the sheet and traced a path directly north to Parincea and west to Bacau. The line cut directly through the Stret river before turning east. No more than fifty kilometers east of the village of Seventi stretched the Galicea forest tract.

Ethan moved to a downstairs window and centered the papers in the light. He read her notes a second time, then carefully overlaid Ana's dots and the Moldavia map. He traced the plot lines several times. They cut directly through the forest, almost exactly due east. He smiled. One more piece of the puzzle had come together. He folded the map as he would have folded a ten _lei_ note. In all likelihood, her musings could have been drawn years earlier. But Ana had left no other talisman behind.

Ethan knew the maps were not drawn to any scale. At a minimum they would need a compass and some method to figure distance. He paused for a moment wondering why he thought of the search in terms of "they." Of course. He couldn't make the search alone. He would require a companion, someone to balance his emotional urgency. Who else but Cyprian? Cyprian: the one person who befriended him before he knew his surname. And the one person who continued to be his ally and defender even after he learned that Ethan was a Jew. Cyprian: who for some reason saw only intelligence and generosity in Ethan; more than once Cyprian had defended him from the curses of the Christians in the back of the classroom. No doubt at least part of Cyprian's allegiance flowed from his attraction to Irina. And if Irina had not been his sister, Ethan too would have taken an interest in her.

Certainly some of Cyprian's presence owed to his size; he towered over boys of his own age and carried a compactness in his arms and shoulders that suggested a latent power. In fact, Cyprian had told him he thought of his shoulders and thighs as leftovers from first maturity because they retained a flabbiness that disgusted him. He was acutely near-sighted, a condition that caused him to continually blink his eyes in an attempt to focus. His vision could have easily been corrected with prescription glasses, but Tolnici offered no medical care. Instead he carried his dead grandmother's glasses (by special mail from Bucharest he boasted). The thick lenses now hung from his shirt, secured by a rusty safety pin.

Ethan disregarded these limitations. Cyprian was steadfast. He would see them through.

* *

Soft and opalescent, dawn broke across the horizon. They waited. Ethan busied himself with the straps on his backpack.

"Over there" Cyprian whispered.

Silent figures drew up. The air carried the scent of wood smoke and breakfast fires. Guardsmen appeared at both ends of the main road. A half barrel of fuel oil burst into flame in the central square. From somewhere came a snatch of laughter. The first rays of the morning sun cast a fine lambent haze.

Ethan watched as a cluster of guardsmen with dogs took up positions near the Ruga home. "They'll have us bottled up in minutes," he whispered.

Cyprian slid along the edge of the tool shed and surveyed the preparations. "The pigs're everywhere. We've got to move now." Cyprian spoke in short bursts. Ethan heard the agitation. Word...breath. Word...breath.

"Any movement will expose us," he said. "For one thing, we can't be seen with these backpacks." Ethan slipped his Mitzvah watch into a side pocket of his pants and secured it. "Put them in the shed." Cyprian reluctantly pulled his belongings off his shoulders.

Moments later Ethan appeared with a wooden rake and an empty canvas seed bag.

"What are you doing?" Cyprian said in a voice that was more of a challenge than a request for information. "I agreed to help you search for Ana. What's this?"

"Take the bag. We can't be seen scrambling to get round the security barriers. They'll be on us in seconds."

Cyprian hooked the bag over his right arm. "So?"

"We're field laborers-eyes down, just another day working the fields, not a threat to anyone.

Cyprian's forehead pinched together. "So if we're able to cross the guard line and reach the road, what then?"

"One step at a time."

Two guards stood before a barbed wire barrier they had unspooled. There was no movement on the road but for the figures of Ethan and Cyprian, deliberately taking up an idle pace, the habit of field hands, not the swift step of those about to dash for freedom.

"Well, what do we have here?"

Ethan struggled to identify the man's idiom. Only the green scarf around his neck identified him as a guardsman. He cradled a single-shot rifle. Cyprian began to mumble an explanation before Ethan's voice rolled over his. "My friend here can't speak too well." Ethan tapped his head and attempted a smirk. "A little slow, but a good worker. We're in the fields every day. We'll be back at sundown."

A bottle of slivovitz passed between the guards. One of them looked more closely at Ethan. "Our orders are to shoot anyone who crosses the blockade. Do you see anyone else doing what you're doing?"

"I suppose not," Ethan said, hoping a bit of contrition might soften the authority of the guardsmen.

The corporal brought the rifle to his shoulder. "So right now I could put a bullet in your Jew head for thinking you could just stroll past us. Bam! Down you go." He turned and grinned at his assistant. "Search them."

Cyprian shifted the handicap Ethan had assigned him into full view. His eyes darted back and forth between the two soldiers, his lips smacked as he turned his vowels upside down. A string of gibberish soon followed as they checked his pockets.

Clearly enjoying the deference to his authority and Cyprian's pantomime, the guardsmen abruptly dismissed them. "Get back to your place. Don't worry, you'll be on the road soon enough. Tomorrow the only ones roaming the streets here will be wild dogs and a few chickens."

* *

Someday you will be Kabbalah. Always someday with my father. Soon a bright horizon just ahead. Watch for it and give thanks to God. Remember that we are The Chosen.

Ana, can you hear me? I did my best to find you. Forgive me if it wasn't good enough.

* *

The assembly passed without incident. Word passed quickly that there would be no transport. Flanked by a new detachment of guardsmen, they were to march the 120 kilometers to Dumanovka. They began the journey over ground already veined with frost. Ethan passed on the word as it made its way down the column: Stay in ranks. Don't stop unless told to do so. Those who drop out of the formation, for whatever reason, will be dealt with. Ethan added his own admonition as word traveled down the column: wait for our moment, wait for our moment.

He pulled his father into the rank beside him. Teodor had lapsed into a stupor. Beside Ethan now was a different person, not the father he had known before the Guard took control. For their part, Dora and Irina had got on with the business of coping with the next day. He watched their stride and knew they were not giving anything back to the Guardsmen. And Cyprian, faithful to a fault, strode behind Irina, her cloth satchel hooked over his shoulder. For Teo, the public degradation of his family had tethered him to that moment and removed all rights to his claim as patriarch, tenuous though it may have been. Without his father, or as his father once was, Ethan feared all the more what lay ahead.

Dora stood three ranks back with Irina. Only by telling them what alternative awaited them did Ethan convince them to leave.

A whistle sounded and the group of 300 souls began to uncoil and move down the gravel roadway. Within hours the sun had cleared the sky and the families moved at a brisk pace. Several women donned their sun hats and a group of children held hands and skipped to the sounds of an imaginary musician. More than once during that first day, Ethan glanced at the assembly and thought of his annual school outing.

By mid-afternoon, his outlook had changed. There were few rest periods. In the rank behind him, he heard a young father repeat and repeat that his son must stop to relieve himself. The guard cursed and spat at him. Moments later, the man seized his son by the shoulders and stepped to a grassy area adjacent to the roadway. The column drew up sharply, as if to give the boy—who appeared to be a child of four or five years—his time and allow him and his father to rejoin.

"Pick up the step! You can't afford to slow down." A thick, gelid voice from the rear of the column.

Ethan saw the guard shoulder his rifle and quickly chamber a bullet. Ethan held his gaze to the road ahead. The sharp report of two shots came moments later. No one looked back. They held their silence for the next hour, as if an unspoken homage could somehow express itself.

Cyprian brushed shoulders with Ethan. "Did you see what happened?"

"I couldn't watch."

"That man they shot? Solo, the baker. Over the embankment he went. His arms around his son's shoulders. Eddie. A good kid. I had to squint and pinch my eyes to see. A puff of smoke from the rifle and they tumbled like ragdolls."

He glanced over his shoulder to insure no one could overhear him.

"Let's break out. Most of the guards are no older than us, they're just shit kickers from Moldavia. You want to wait until one of them puts a bullet in your back? That's if they know one end of the rifle from the other. C'mon. Let's go tonight."

Ethan stood silent for a moment. "I can't. Not yet. My father...Irina..."

"All right. I don't know why, but I'll wait."

Nightfall brought rest and a bowl of turnip soup. They were left to provide for themselves along the roadside. Many families pulled heavy garments from their suitcases and attempted to make up a sleeping area and windbreak. Others sprawled on the barren earth, overcome with exhaustion.

Bundled against each other for warmth, Ethan and Teo settled behind a small copse of trees. "Sandu?" He waited a moment and called again. Only the cry of a child could be heard.

"All right father?" Ethan spoke softly to him as he leaned forward and attempted to squeeze some warmth into his feet. Teo grunted. He grasped his father's shoulder and held it long enough to remind him that he would not be deserted. Dora and Irina were nearby. His mother caught his eye and offered a slice of sausage. Ethan sensed a pulse of strength. Small acts of courage. "Share it with Irina," he said.

At night he removed his boots and used them as a headrest. No one could touch them without his being able to seize the hands of the thief. Little things.

He pulled his father close to him. Once the ground under him began to respond to his body heat, he drew the edge of his coat over his father. Ethan slept a dreamless sleep. Teo remained motionless.

Before dawn they were moving again. Ethan surveyed the figures as they assembled. He stood at the side of the road, taking care not to attract the attention of the road guard. He repeatedly folded and unfolded his sleeping blanket, buying time for himself and eyeing each man as he fell into the formation. He searched the oncoming column for the face of his brother.

An army vehicle rolled through the ground fog and pulled abreast of the column. Ethan saw the driver point in his direction. Moments later, a young man approached him. No uniform except the green shirt. He held a pitchfork as if it were a carbine. The boy shook the fork at Ethan and muttered a curse that Ethan could not understand.

"Back into formation! Where's your column?"

Ethan offered that he had just run from the latrine to joint his rank. He quickly fell into step with the others. The young soldier glared at him. "If I see you again not moving, I'll split your head with this."

Ethan returned his black countenance. He saw a boy's face, hair matted from the morning moisture, a small greasy cap hiding what innocence may have remained. They exchanged no words and the event passed in seconds.

* *

Noontime. Sandu sat without expression at the edge of the road. For a moment, Ethan felt no sense of recognition. Then he saw the powerful forearms hanging uselessly at his side. Ethan immediately knelt before him.

"Sandu, it's me. Ethan." No response.

He raised his voice. "Come on. Join us at the front of the column."

Sandu remained silent. He sat upon a filthy cloth sack, his knees pulled under his chin. At intervals he would tilt his head to the left for a moment, then to the opposite side. At each movement he shook his head, much like a swimmer intent on draining water from the ear canal. It was then that Ethan saw a stream of red fluid issuing from his left ear. Sandu had ripped the inside liner from his cap and pressed it against the path of the fluid. The back of his hand had become slate blue.

A woman drew up next to them and peered at Sandu's ear. "He's lost a lot of blood." She held her soup ration close to her coat. She sighed, turned and left them.

A shrill whistle and the group once again rose. Guards began circling the perimeter, using whatever weapons or farm implements they had on hand to instill an air of authority. Their faces were invariable—all separate but somehow all the same. More than once Ethan thought he recognized Stanescu, only to realize that the faces meant nothing. Seemingly, the guards from Moldavia had broken away and a different group had assumed direction of the Tolnici refugees.

Sandu remained motionless. The column began to wind its way around him. "Forget it, kid," someone said.

Ethan locked his hands under Sandu's shoulders and began to pull. "Cyprian, help me for God's sake. I...I can't leave him like this."

Cyprian turned sharply at Ethan's voice and pointed to a figure on the road ahead. Ethan settled his brother's arms beside him, then knelt in silence for a moment. By the time he resumed his step with the moving column, the boy guard had taken his measure. He began closing the distance to Ethan from where he stood, moving in a light trot with the fork leveled like a warrior's lance. Cyprian saw the movement and moved abreast to shield Ethan from the guard's view. The guard stopped and took up a position at an angle to the column, waiting for Ethan to draw within striking distance.

Then a rush of unintelligible voices. At that moment, the guard lowered his fork and ran toward the group. The column continued to move. Ethan glanced away for a moment to insure he was in step. To attract attention again could be fatal. Ethan followed the guard's path as he joined the group assembled around the prone figure of Sandu. His brother's torso was slewed to the left, his jaw flat on his chest.

Cyprian seized Ethan's arm. "Look straight ahead and thank God I'm still here to save your ass. That kid would spear you the way I butchered pigs."

He had no desire to look a second time. Somehow he wanted to fall upon his mother and sister and obscure their vision. But others must have observed the scene because the group closed ranks and fell silent as it passed the huddled form.

From behind him his father recited the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead:

However brief may be our time on earth, O God.

You endow our fleeting days with abiding worth. We now

recall the loved ones whom death has recently taken from us...

* *

By the third day, the intent became unmistakable. Most, if not all, of the elderly were lost during daylight hours. Children succumbed at night. In a turbulent sleep with his boots jammed under his head, Ethan would be startled by a scream and hear the lamentation of a mother who had discovered the grim penalty of nights in the Romanian countryside. Their elevation was now substantially higher; snow squalls swept through the encampment just before dawn. By daylight the lost children were bundled in small cocoons of handmade blankets, at peace where they lay. A dusting of snow left a thin white mantle over the motionless forms. Still vigilant, Ethan took up his customary position, waiting for the sound of the whistle. He did not let himself think about the children or Sandu.

As they passed through small villages—a silent gray column emitting nothing more than tangled breathing, coughs and the chuffing of boots—a face would appear for a moment at a window and dissolve just as quickly. Their expressions betrayed nothing. "Suria" said a village marker along one roadway. One night, they made bivouac near a train station that stood empty of any traffic. The windows had been smashed and the station master's door stood partially open. A sign near the single track read AMARA.

"Where have all the villagers gone? The mothers? Children?" Ethan looked to Teodor for a response.

His father studied the footprints ahead and said nothing. A burst of wind tugged at his head scarf.

"And the dogs" Ethan said. "Every village has dogs. Has the world ended at this Amara place?"

"Not yet. But we are at the beginning of the end."

"Have faith father. Don't...we need you." He studied Teo's hands as they moved, two limbs acting as a metronome for the rest of his body. The backs of his hands were deeply veined and scaled from the frigid nightly temperatures that carried no moisture. The entire hand itself appeared bloated, out of proportion to the thin wrist to which it was attached.

* *

If the journey to Dumonovka developed any pattern, it was Ethan's habit of sitting with Irina each evening. He would methodically unpack her blanket and enclose it around her legs. Having secured it, he removed her boots and rubbed the soles of her feet, all the while exchanging small words of encouragement, of simple gratitude that their destination lay not too distant.

Cyprian said little during these interludes. Ethan knew him well enough to sense that his quiet moments with Irina stirred a sense of wantonness. Only too quickly would Cyprian be the one to massage her ankles and feet, to shelter Irina from the nighttime winds, the two of them forming a single S on the blanket.

Ethan glanced at the campfire and let his thoughts settle around the scene with Irina and Cyprian. It was sometime after midnight. The moon shed a fuzzy shadow over Cyprian's blanket. A moment later, Cyprian stirred and huddled near the dying embers, gathering the heat. He turned to Irina and caressed her hair, drawing the single plait though his hands again and again. His left knee settled to the ground, then came to full repose against her recumbent form. His touch brought full wakefulness to Irina, who reacted like a startled gazelle. Her shriek sent Cyprian bounding back to his blankets, both trouser legs corkscrewing in the night air.

* *

Near the end of the week, their column branched off a paved roadway and made its way along a gravel path. In the distance they could see the heavy drills and hydraulic shovels that surrounded the site. Ethan surveyed the assembly and did a quick tabulation. Eighty-five souls had completed the march. He instinctively wanted to give thanks to the Almighty for his deliverance. But how could a caring, loving God have permitted children to enter a frozen slumber from which they would not awake? Or for Sandu to bleed away until his eyes turned to glass? Was the Eye really at work in all of this?

The answer came that evening as they made camp before the final leg to Dumanovka. Dora pulled him to her side and whispered, "The Herescus said that Stanescu isn't with these soldiers. They're looking for him, I don't know why. They say he's broken away from the Guard, and gone back to Tolnici to look for certain of our people."

# Southern Romania (Galati)

The corrugated gate swung open with their approach just before dawn. Enescu's "Rhapsodies" echoed from the camp loudspeaker system as they approached the threshold. Nearby stood two indifferent sentries.

Ahead a man with a thatch of albino hair stumbled to the roadside and fumbled with his trousers in a hurried attempt to urinate. A guard broke from the formation, rifle trailing at his side, called a warning. The column came to an uneasy halt.

Ethan instantly turned to Cyprian. "Follow me if you can." Moments later the guard drew abreast of him. With all his strength Ethan seized the barrel of the rifle and swung it in a hasty arc until it struck inches behind the kneecap. Before the guard collapsed, Ethan clutched Cyprian's sleeve and held him as they plunged into the underbrush.

No words were exchanged as they fought their way into the forest. At one point Ethan heard Cyprian gasp as they dashed across a break in the wood line. They scaled a massive downed trunk and slipped down an embankment covered with a carpet of ferns and moss. Ethan redoubled his grip on the rifle.

"Turn here," Ethan said. They shifted their path in the direction of the wind. Cyprian lost his footing as they turned. The shouts of the guards became fainter. For a moment Ethan was seized with the thought that they would send dogs in pursuit. But he cautioned himself. There were no dogs present on the march. Surely there were some kept at Dumanovka. But it would take time to marshal the animals and set them to the scent. "We'll zigzag, like foxes. If we come to a stream, we'll use it as a path. Stay on your feet." Cyprian muttered a question about their direction. Ethan ignored it.

They continued through the forest until sunset. Cyprian's breathing became more pronounced. "Stop for a second." Ethan halted and released his grip on Cyprian who fell wordlessly to the ground. Ethan crouched and listened.

"Hold onto me when we move again," Cyprian whispered. He held up his glasses. One lens remained, and it revealed a spider web of fractures. "Don't let me die out here."

They came upon a promontory of rock that blended almost imperceptibly with its surroundings .

"Why are we stopping?"

"Because there's a hundred tons of rock in front of us," Ethan said. "And no more questions. Keep your mouth shut before someone hears your voice."

At the top of the cliff face, they found a spot that offered good concealment and a commanding view of the forest floor beneath them. Huddled against Cyprian that night for warmth, Ethan swallowed his hunger and pieced together their situation. The curses of the guards had fallen silent.

No provisions and only a vague sense of direction. The forest probably teeming with refugees. Why expect it to be any different for us?

_Can I draw some strength from good things_? First for the resolve of Cyprian who seemed to never consider abandoning him, and for the reassurance he felt at that precise moment with the firm stock of the rifle resting against his thigh. And then to Ana that somehow a pathway may open to her, perhaps not the Galicea Forest but another means of deliverance—was it not possible? And for Irina, he asked God not to restrain him in any way from his desire to make amends for the day he stood before her with the camera.

But _where_ is God in all this? Yes, He's given me Cyprian and yet He's chosen to give him only partial sight and a simple mind. My chances of survival would be better without him.

He drew both hands together and rubbed vigorously. Needle points of cold were already at work. He pushed on with his thoughts: where is the comfort of reading scripture with my father? A voice within: if you seek the intervention of God, first ask Ana who walked across the north pasture one day and never returned. Or Ask Irina who was left defenseless on cold pavement stones as Stanescu advanced on her. Or look to Sandu— allowed to die with nothing more than a fertilizer bag as a headstone.

Cyprian broke through his reverie.

"Ethan?"

"Go back to sleep. I'll keep watch for awhile."

"I'm worried."

"I said I'd keep watch."

"I can't forget seeing Sandu on that roadway. Will the same happen to my parents and Irina and—-"

"How do I know? I can't do anything about Irina any longer. Not from here. It's Ana who's on my mind."

They set off before dawn. The Parincea Road ran at a slight elevation through pastureland. At times they were the only figures on the road, two more faceless displaced persons, journeying east. Infrequently they would spot a squad of guardsmen on foot patrol in the distance. They halted and waited until the soldiers fell away from view. At other times a wheeled transport rumbled in the distance. Sometimes the vehicles would be carrying soldiers, at other times they would be towing new farm equipment. If they could not conceal themselves as the transports passed, they pulled their caps low and acknowledged nothing. The day drew on, overcast and still. Cyprian offered no talk as they wound their way north. "I have the route she planned to follow" Ethan said. "I don't see us walking as far as Bacau. Ana's much closer."

"How do you know?" Cyprian stopped for a moment and drew a cloth across his forehead.

"You don't have brothers or sisters. I've always taken care of Ana, we just know what the other is doing, we...forget it, I can't tell you how we think."

At dawn they left the road and threaded their way along the neat rectangles of farmland until they came upon a small wooden structure that served as storage shed for winter wheat. They agreed they should alternate watch during the night. But by midnight both of them had fallen into a deep sleep. Nothing disturbed them except a large owl that dropped out of the sky at midnight. It alighted on the wooden beam for a moment and then dissolved.

Ground fog still blanketed the field when they awoke. Ethan was immediately on his feet. "We have to move now." Moist air swirled around his figure. Before Cyprian could respond, Ethan had slipped through the door-less entry.

The Carpathians dominate the geography of Romania and appear to many visitors to be the most noteworthy geological feature of the country. Certainly less well known than the mountain ranges are the karst formations which lace the interior geography at unpredictable intervals. Karst is the indelible end product of centuries of soil carbonation. Over time the formations have produced giant gullies, sinkholes and caves. Along the central spine of Romania—the road that Ethan and Cyprian followed—karst manifests itself most frequently in the formation of caves. They undulate their way north until they meet the Carpathian steppes. Along the way, the formations have produced sheltered openings just large enough for small livestock to gather on winter days. Typically, these openings extend only a small distance before they intersect with an unyielding plate of limestone. In other areas, however, the karst has produced larger tunnels, some extending for hundreds of meters into trackless corridors of mineral water pools with silent bats said to be as large as hawks.

On their fifth day, Ethan and Cyprian huddled in one of the caves. Its opening stood at the base of a sharp ravine and was only discernible if one left the roadway and followed the course of the cut until it revealed the path to the cave. A windstorm had swept in unexpectedly from the east and they were thankful to have come upon the shelter.

Ethan cleared the debris of a fire pit. It became obvious that the cave had been used by refugees and hunters. The pit gave off the odor of damp wood. Black fingers of soot extended from both sides of the fire bed. Charred pieces of peat and a discarded meat tin sat to the side of the pit. As Ethan swept the surface, a round object became apparent. He removed his cap and rubbed the ash from its metal surface. As he rubbed more vigorously, sensing something magical, he heard the small clapper inside the bell.

Cyprian raised his head in curiosity. Ethan shook the bell a second time.

"Listen. It's the sound of Ana. She's been here!"

"A bell?" Cyprian blinked. "How can a rusty bell tell us anything?"

"You don't understand. She speaks only to her brother." Ethan lifted the bell from the ashes and cupped his hands around it.

* *

What was left to them now would be to close the distance to the Galicea Forest. It would be a simple matter of following the Parincea Road until they reached the outskirts of Bacau. It could be done. Yes, he told himself, with enough imagination and resolve they would find her kneeling beside the stream bed, her small hand gliding through the water in search of an unsuspecting salamander.

At mid-morning they branched off their route and followed the path of a small rivulet of water which appeared remarkably clean. The sun cut tiny diamonds in the stream. They followed it for some distance and came upon a pool of water where they could drink and bathe. The pool was the first collection of water they had come upon, and Ethan saw it as symbolic: the trail was closing upon her. He sat back and watched Cyprian quickly shed his clothing and began padding into the water. Cyprian's skin took on the color of fine alabaster. It glistened when he submerged and surfaced, and Ethan sensed an unaccustomed stirring deep in his groin.

In his haste to remove his boots and trousers, Ethan failed to see a figure emerge from the trees. It waited until Ethan had stripped down to his tumescent self.

"Sit down before you embarrass yourself even more." The figure stepped toward Ethan clad in an ill-fitting tunic of the Guard. The cap of an enlisted soldier covered the head; a tattered coat-of-arms hung from its front fold. Ethan could see that the intruder was very young and caked in mud. He held an ancient rifle directly at Ethan's chest. He waved Cyprian out of the pool and watched without expression as the two of them gathered up their clothes and dressed. "I'm not afraid to pull this trigger...who are you?"

Ethan glanced at the figure for a moment, furiously trying to piece together a narrative. "We come from the south. Russian soldiers are only days from our village. We're searching for relatives in Bacau. Can you help us?"

Ethan couldn't know if the deceit was effective or not. He glanced at Cyprian who hastily nodded in agreement with Ethan's account.

Their interrogator swept the muzzle of the rifle between them. "And you are what? Brothers? Comrades? Lovers?"

"Traveling companions," Cyprian said.

The soldier dropped to one knee. "Do you have any food? Anything? I haven't eaten in days."

Cyprian immediately pulled a packet of dried beef from his knapsack. It was seized and eaten without a word. They watched as the guardsman removed a cloth uniform cap. Thick brown hair tumbled from beneath it. "My name is Liliana. I thank you for the food. Your story is no doubt a lie, but it doesn't matter."

Ethan and Cyprian exchanged glances. "So Miss Liliana, can we trust you?" Ethan lowered the muzzle of his rifle to her level.

She glanced at the firearm. "Don't be so foolish."

Ethan blushed momentarily and stepped back.

She prodded her own rifle with a toe. "Useless. The Guard took out the firing pins. They're so old they don't even have bullets for them. They're just to frighten people." She looked directly at both of them. "I'm on the run too."

Lili drained the canteen Cyprian offered. "The Guard came through our village. Took what pleased them—livestock, food, brandy. They said they were looking for Jews, but they took from all of us. Some fought back. My uncle found one of them in our barn, and ran a pitchfork though him. See? I wear his shirt and pants. It was the only way I could escape. I saw what they were doing to the women and girls."

"We're looking for my little sister. Did you see a little girl, about thirteen-fourteen, long brown hair?" Ethan smiled and searched Liliana's face.

"I stay off the road—you can't trust nobody."

"That's not an answer" Ethan said.

Lili glared at him and said nothing.

"How long have you been here?" Cyprian asked.

"I dunno. Two, three weeks." Liliana pointed to a wind-break of branches and vines. "My camp..." She began another half sentence, paused, and mouthed the words with a thick tongue. "Water is okay here, no I'm sorry the water is goot here but game...no. That's all I can tell you." Ethan stood. Liliana cupped her hands around her knees as she settled to the ground. Every bone in her hand was visible. The tendons of her fingers stood out in sharp relief; Ethan thought of harp strings when he looked at them. The guard uniform—still displaying the pink entry points of the pitchfork—shrouded her shoulders. She sat hollow-eyed, her jaw clicking in a vacant gesture.

Ethan and Cyprian exchanged glances. Cyprian picked up the rifle. "We may have some use for this."

"Come with us," Ethan said. "We have some food, and if we work together we may be able to trap something. You can't remain here. You'll die."

Liliana slowly got to her feet and made her way to her campsite.

Within the hour, they moved along the road north, Ethan in the lead, Liliana struggling to maintain the walking pace, and Cyprian careful to keep his newly acquired firearm under his right shoulder. Ethan carried Liliana's knapsack and felt an unsettling sense of guardianship towards her.

Ethan scanned the fenced area and then looked again, as if to confirm his first impression. They knelt behind a small fist of shrubs surrounding a wood cottage. Ethan held up his hand for silence. He could see no movement outside, no chimney smoke. He heard nothing except the dry pecking of several chickens in the small garden adjacent to the wooden privy. Cyprian stood and tossed a small stone amidst the chickens.

A moderate squawk of protest, a fluttering of wings, then silence. Ethan smiled and nodded to his companions. "Lili, move into the garden. Clap your hands and drive the hens toward me. Cyprian, same thing for you. Keep them headed in my direction."

Ethan crouched low and waited. His legs felt tentative, as if his muscles had lost all tension, all ability to hold his bones together. His stomach shook almost imperceptibly. They had been four days without substantial food. At that moment, Lili advanced in his direction, smiling for the first time in many months as a fat hen skated in front of her. Ethan settled in his tracks, much like a football goal keeper, and waited for his quarry. The hen, however, immediately divined the purpose of all the unwelcome noise and shot off at a right angle to Ethan.

Cyprian had little success in cornering any of his targets and now dashed around to intercept Ethan's chicken. All sense of surprise had now been lost and Ethan laughed as the hapless hens scattered under the feet of their invaders. A general alarm known only to barnyard fowl coursed through the yard.

Lili's single hen bounded several times before it found safety in a nearby tree. Lili shook her fists in frustration from beneath the tree, and her intended victim responded with a gelatinous dropping. Ethan watched as it splashed across Lili's boot. They stood beside each other as the hen seesawed from one leg to the other and several russet colored feathers floated from the tree limb. Its head pivoted a moment later, and a radiant yellow eye peered at them.

In the distance, Cyprian swept the underbrush with Lili's rifle and spat out curses at any chicken still in hiding. Ethan was totally unprepared for what followed: the gnawing in his stomach gave way to a sudden expansion of his lungs and the air filled with his laughter. What other answer can be given to a futile episode when survival is at stake? Lili must have agreed with him for he saw her face break into a smile that would linger for hours.

At twilight, the embers of the cooking fire had settled into a white ash. Cyprian triumphantly turned the spit as the plump hen slowly rotated and droplets of fat fell into the fire. Each drop sent up a small wisp of smoke, and with it came the rich aroma of roasting meat.

* *

Midnight. The spit still hung over the white embers. Nothing remained of the carcass but a few bones. Now and again a bubble of sap would burst and drop into the hot ash. The fire would regain its strength within seconds; once the flames gained full strength, a robust shadow began to lick at the recumbent figures lining the fire pit. Ethan lay to one side, his face suffused by the flames. His blanket no longer served as a utilitarian protection from the early morning chill. It had now become the top layer for heated commerce between Lili and Cyprian. From beneath it came curious sounds. Ethan stirred for a moment, then stood and listened. The sounds were inviting. First a grunt, an odd guttural sound to his ear. Ethan moved closer and lifted the edge of the blanket. A sigh, more restive motion from beneath. Cyprian's right boot abruptly shot from under the blanket as he sought to dig in the toe and raise himself above Liliana. Not a sound came from anywhere except for the voice of Cyprian. " _There_. Don't move." At the sound of the command, Ethan quickly stepped back, narrowly escaping the fire pit.

"No!" Lily said.

He closed his eyes and the moment became one with another. Lili had cried out just as Irina had cried out. Cyprian's boot struggling for a footing in the loose soil had become Stanescu's. Both their voices were fringed with excitement. Ethan found the bile in the back of his throat had lost none of its bitterness.

* *

By noon the next day, they closed on the Galicea forest. Lili trailed well behind Ethan and Cyprian. She refused to speak to either of them. For most of the afternoon, Ethan found himself the mediator, despite his disgust with Cyprian.

The land that only twenty four hours earlier had provided sustenance now yielded a seemingly endless range of trees. Oaks splayed out their slim striped branches and reached for the clouds. They obscured the sun with their muscular branches and the trees beneath them fell under their shadow. Fir trees rose to great heights, and only the crests of the trees captured the nourishment of the sun. At ground level where Ethan now treaded, the desiccated path stood in a mottled half light.

They entered an area where it was impossible to determine direction, to anticipate what might appear thirty paces ahead, or what eyes might be watching as the forest closed around them.

Off to his left came a murmur. He stopped and heard a whisper of rushing feet, a faint shrill voice.

"There!"

He pointed to the shadows ahead.

Cyprian raised his hands in question, for he had heard nothing.

At that moment Ethan saw a flash of brown hair and her apricot colored skirt as she weaved through the trees ahead.

"Into the trees" he called again. He broke away and began to pursue the fleeing image. It advanced toward him for a moment, Ana's face distinct, and then receded. He forced himself to thrash and struggle through the brush that grabbed at his legs.

A sun-washed clearing opened and her image darted across the expanse, shrieking in delight. Ethan cast off his knapsack and cap. He ignored the searing sensation in his lungs.

He shortened the distance between them but drew up quickly as she broke through the brush and approached the edge of a sheer basalt cliff. Without slowing she tumbled over the edge and spread her arms in flight. Ethan plunged into space behind her.

Down and down they fell, pin-wheeling through the unobstructed air. He reached for Ana's hand and it was there. The rock face slipped by him at a jerky pace, moving like a ruptured piece of film. He looked back: Cyprian and Lili were falling as well. They plummeted toward him and he looked in wonder as they streamed by. Then a cascade of objects: knapsacks, water canteens, Lili's useless rifle, Ana's penciled map, and the two Fischof children— still calling for their mother and father.

The velocity of his descent eased and Ethan turned to see Dora and Teodor flash by; it was impossible to see if they were troubled or pleased with him. Irina appeared and extended her arms to arrest their descent. His limbs had grown cold in the rush of air and he forced himself to turn towards Irina and grasp her hands. She spoke, but he couldn't hear her voice in the rush of air. He heard himself calling for Ana. The ground rushed toward him.

* *

Cyprian shook Ethan's shoulder. "Ethan! Your _kopf_ is off again. Wake up...why be talking to Ana? You see that smoke on the horizon? The moss on this side of the trees? That's north. It takes us back home and maybe a pump where we can wash. We're in danger out here. And Ana...where is she? Can you tell me? Or do we go looking for bells in the ashes again?"

Ethan inhaled deeply, attempting to clear his head of the compounded images of Ana, Lili and Irina—faithful even as they disappeared into the floor of the forest.

"Are you with me or not? I say we trust this map."

Cyprian studied the map for a moment. "Looks like scribble. I don't trust it. Let's head back. I've had enough."

Ethan remained silent for a moment. He'd seen the reaction before: first, the initial bluster, then Cyprian would study the text and allow enough time to pass for one to conclude that he was actually reading it. Then came his vacuous expression, the acute embarrassment. "We owe it to Ana to complete the final steps she's marked" Ethan said. "How do we know she wouldn't be at the point of finding the children?"

"Come on, this is all fantasy, you know that."

But Cyprian did not object any further to resuming the effort. And Ethan knew that Cyprian was entirely dependent on his skills to get them back to Tolnici. It pleased him to have a companion with such attractive limitations.

They searched until dusk. Both of them startled when a clutch of pheasants burst from the ground ahead of them. No other sound reached them. Ethan stopped repeatedly to orient the map to their direction. Finally Cyprian stepped away in a fit of frustration. Ethan heard him groan and curse.

Cyprian's hectoring came in short bursts. "You don't see anything, do you? I'm talking about things beyond what your eyes tell you. You can't see her—can you? Are you daft or something?"

Ethan reached for the leather laces around Cyprian's collar and drew him within inches of his face.

"All right. We may never find her. It's time to go home."

Cyprian nodded without much conviction. He glanced back at Liliana. "What about her?"

"Hey, would you want to be left to the Guard patrols?"

Cyprian tugged at his sleeve. "She's not one of us. But what does it matter? Maybe you want some ah...female companionship?"

"She comes with us. I'll take care of Lili if you can't."

* *

By late afternoon they had left the forest behind and began cautious passage along the roadway. For whatever reason, the road was devoid of foot or wheeled traffic. Ethan hoped to capitalize on their good fortune. He increased his step, only to see Liliana falling further behind. Cyprian took it upon himself to bring her along and not allow the distance between them to become too great.

A short time later he called from behind. "She's fallen."

They set no fire. Cyprian offered the fragments of chicken he had rolled into his pocket. They both watched as Liliana examined the splintered bones and proceeded to suck on each one.

"What now?" Cyprian appeared to grow more anxious as the darkness became complete. "We'll make no progress with her. Could be days before we reach the village."

Lily rose on one elbow. "I'm with him. Leave me. I'll be stronger in a few days. It makes sense. Go back before a patrol finds you."

"You'll stay with us," Ethan said. "We'll cut branches, make a stretcher for you." He nodded to Cyprian. "That necklace you made for Irina from the viola root, remember? See if you can find the root here, and what we don't use for Lily, we'll use for food."

They reached the karst fields in the midst of driving rain and sleet. The west winds seemed to pick up each particle of moisture and pepper their faces and hands. Lily's stretcher had become sodden. Distance was now measured by the severity of their shoulder spasms.

After two days of the same horizon, Cyprian halted and lowered his end of the pallet.

"No more. I can't..."

Ethan said nothing and refused to look at him.

Lily drew herself to a sitting position facing Ethan. "Please. Don't worry yourself."

Twenty yards from where they stood the Parincea Road came to life. A convoy of Guard trucks rumbled towards them. No one had to sound the alarm. They dashed into the bush in seconds.

Minutes later the brown talcum of their passing dusted the trees surrounding the cave they had chosen for Lili. It opened from the downwind side and appeared to offer adequate sun during the afternoon hours. Cyprian examined the interior. Fat goblets of condensation collected along the top of the entrance and threaded to the rear, beetle-like, where a small pool had already formed.

"We can't do this. Who would want to be left here?"

"You know how I feel," Ethan said. "But you're the one who doesn't have the muscle to carry her. I can't pull her along on my own."

"Oh, I'm the one? You were the one who lost his sister in the north pasture, you're the one whose stupidity brought us here in the first place. Hey, I'm trying to help you."

Ethan threw himself against Cyprian and began tearing at his face.

Lili seized Ethan's trouser leg. "Stop it, both of you! You're wasting your strength. Look, I can walk—see?" She paced off a delicate pattern, a step away from a pirouette. "We're better off together. I was wrong. Can we please get along?"

Ethan and Cyprian nodded in slow acquiescence. They would move together.

* *

After midnight, the sky turned luminous, only to resolve itself minutes later with angry fistfuls of rain—microbursts that tore over their heads and pinned the overhanging branches to the ground. They moved across an open patch, sidestepping the rivulets of water. Lili clung to Cyprian's shoulder. A cross hatch of wet beams appeared ahead and they quickly took shelter under an abandoned wood trestle bridge.

"Probably a railway to nowhere," Ethan said.

"You think it's safe here?" Cyprian scanned the shadows under the trestle, blinking each time he turned his head.

"We'll know in the morning." He adjusted the jacket around Cyprian's shoulders and offered his blanket to Lili. She set to work without hesitation and within minutes the blanket was anchored next to Cyprian.

* *

The morning sun cast a yellow haze over them. The planks above sliced the rays into neat bronze trapezoids which lay at their feet. Tiny dust motes burst into color as they drifted into the bars of light. Above two jays argued over their territory and then fell silent as a sound approached. A vehicle labored in the distance, its small engine whining with each gear change. They withdrew into the shadows and waited. The sound grew louder then exploded out of the tree line minutes later. Dust and fine gravel blanketed them and a fine chalk residue hung in the air. They remained motionless, wordless. The sound faded and they were left with a dredging heartbeat.

Ethan pulled himself level with the trestle ties and watched. The truck had pulled off the trail and before it came to a complete halt, the rear tarp opened and two guardsmen alighted. One of them stood behind the truck and motioned the driver to reverse. Ethan drew lower and heard the soldier order the truck to stop.

"Can we make a run for it?" Cyprian whispered. He blinked once, twice, paused and began again.

"Only if we want to draw attention to ourselves, we'll do what the hares in the fields do, remember when we walked to Cluj? When they saw us they would freeze in their tracks. Same with us—we make no move, draw no attention.

"Hey fuckhead," the guardsman called to the driver. "I told you to stop five kilometers back. There's a stream there and I need to take a dump. Open your ears sometime so I can see the daylight between them."

Still cursing, he dropped off the road way and made his way back to where the stream had widened. They heard the splash of urine and then silence as the soldier finished his business. The troop transport idled in the distance. Moments later the young soldier crossed into view and scaled the embankment to the trestle. He eyed each tie as he crossed some of them just wide enough to allow a boot to slip through and become entrapped. He cursed and stepped with care. His right leg swung in an awkward parabola before it came to rest on the wooden tie. Debris fell upon Cyprian's face. He abruptly shifted his position. The soldier heard the movement. He halted and straddled the trestle for a moment, mumbling his incomprehension at what was revealed beneath him.

"What the hell?"

Ethan sprang to his feet. "Go! Go!" His hand sliced toward a jumble of conifers twenty feet away. He dashed towards it.

Cyprian let out a sharp whinny and began clawing for his sleeping blanket and pulling Lili to her feet. The guardsman was at their side in seconds and drove the stock of his rifle into Cyprian's chest. He collapsed without a sound.

Ethan sank lower behind a wooded berm and watched. The soldier fixed Cyprian's neck under his boot, snapped his rifle to the shoulder, and brought the wood line into range. He emptied a magazine into the brush—Ethan's intended path. Alarmed by the sound, his squad tumbled from the truck and surrounded Cyprian and Lili. It was Ethan's final image before he dissolved into the woods.

Something tore at his leg as he swam further into the underbrush. The sensation carried an unexpected aftershock with it. Only when his left ankle turned white-hot did he realize the guardsman had found his mark, most probably by luck alone.

Shit.

Another bullet whined by his right ear. He huddled behind a thick spruce tree and delicately pulled a fragment of saturated sock away from his ankle. The bullet had grazed his ankle bone and shredded the skin beneath it. He pitched sideways to a new position and quickly surveyed the trestle area where Lili and Cyprian stood in single file. Then voices behind, a jumble of activity, the truck roaring in reverse gear. Impossible to know if the sound was closing on him or growing fainter.

On your feet. Now left, now like an arrow straight ahead, now for a break in the trees and right.

His lungs shuddered and yielded to the desire for relief. He would not allow any physical constraint to take hold of him—he would run for a horizon he could not see, he would run while his heart pounded with the impact of his boots on the pine needle beds, run until movement no longer was possible. Then he would fall to the earth and embrace it.

* *

A stack of saturated branches stood at his feet. He struck aimlessly at a mica stone. Nothing came of it. He rolled back on his haunches. Movements were agonizingly slow. He examined his legs. His pants were shot through with burrs, some of them embedded in the fabric itself. Each step brought needles of pain.

Now what set upon Ethan was a hollow feeling, deep in his bones, beyond the sluggishness of his movements, beyond the stomach spasms which erupted every few hours. As he stood, he felt the back of his head drop away, his vision laced with tiny pulsing globes that moved from left to right, then turned and crawled in the opposite direction. He could chew no more damp leaves. He had long since given up trapping any game. Perhaps it was best that he had left Cyprian and Lili behind some weeks ago. It had seemed heartless at the time, but had he not done so, there would now be three of them on the edge of starvation. True, they were undoubtedly taken by a Guard patrol to some stinking pen until the Guard decided what to do with them. But at least there would be food there...they would sit at wooden tables, a metal dish with cold potatoes, some soup ladled up from boiled offal. His stomach rumbled at the thought.

He gave himself time to rest. Each movement sapped what little energy remained. His attention no longer centered on Cyprian and Lili or what direction he should follow. One image now became dominant: warm meat. No matter if it was cleaved from the ribs of a squirrel or stripped from the muscular legs of a rabbit. He found it pointless to think about the temperature of the meat. It needn't be roasted over white coals. That would take hours of preparation. Better to lift the strips of flesh to the mouth while the animal's warm blood still suffused it.

The chill of a late autumn day was unmistakable. A slice of low grey cloud scuttled eastward on a rogue wind; leaves marked with the palette of early November showered along the ground. The moment brought a curious stillness; the buzz and hum of insects had flickered out, leaving the woods dwelling in a globe of silence. The only sound now lay at his feet, where the scratching of windblown leaves clawed at his boots.

In the distance a yelp, the sound of a dog being restrained. Then the sharp voice of someone commanding the animal. He saw a lone guardsman break from the wood line, struggling to keep the alsatian under control. Ethan stood transfixed. Now was the time to flee. He couldn't move himself. What could be gained by it? Only enough strength remained for one final act.

The animal paused and sounded an alert for his tracker. In an instant Ethan knew the dog had picked up some scent of him and was pulling the soldier in his direction. He fought the urge to draw back into the wood line and hope he would not be detected. But that too seemed futile. What had retreat from a threat ever brought him? He had hidden from the Guardsmen, abandoned Cyprian and Lili on the trail, and backed away from confronting Stanescu.

Enough.

He pulled his jacket off and scented it, rubbing it first across his scalp and then moistening it with his hands. He tossed the garment out into the clearing then backed away before beginning a slow semicircle away from the scene, walking rapidly at first and then breaking into an open run. His legs failed him but his strength was sufficient to allow him to complete the arc toward the soldier, pause for a few moments, and then approach him from behind. The dog was much larger than his first impression. The animal had lowered its powerful frame to the ground and buried its muzzle deep in Ethan's jacket. The soldier dropped his helmet and backpack and began to check the pockets. The dog lifted and turned its head seconds before Ethan was upon him. He put all his strength into the downward blow. The mica rock struck across the right lobe. The soldier crabbed backwards at the sound, wiping the dog's splattered blood from around his eyes and groping for his rifle. Ethan again brought the rock to full elevation over his head and saw the fresh face of a boy much too young to be a soldier. _God will never forgive me for this_. His fingers began to slip from the bloody surface of the rock. His hands followed the path of the rock as it grazed the boy's chin and sank deep into his shoulder. The boy recoiled in pain and mumbled something about his mother. Ethan kicked the rifle out of reach.

He tore open the knapsack and found a length of sausage in a greasy wrapping, a water bottle and small binoculars. The young soldier lay silently, sobbing and pleading for help. Ethan stood over him. The boy attempted to speak through the pain.

He took the blanket and wrapped the young man's shoulder as best he could. The boy fell silent as Ethan sat him upright against a tree and gathered up the rifle. Ethan stuffed the rations, water and a rusty compass into his knapsack.

As he turned and approached the tree line, Ethan heard the boy weeping. "Sej," he called, reaching for the dog. Ethan gently helped him into position beside it.

* *

He walked until his ankle began to throb and the wrap became saturated. He ate the rations as he traveled. The blood had congealed on his hands and begun to flake off as he scoured the knapsack once he had made camp. He thought of Stanescu strutting around Tolnici in his uniform.

So this is the heart of your Iron Guard, the saviors of the Romanian people? You were the ones who are going to reform the countryside? _And what did I see? I saw boys—-maybe twelve years old—in uniforms two sizes too big for them._ Unable to even handle a rifle. A children's army. You send them off to have their shoulders smashed. Then they cry for their mothers. I could have killed him. Had he been a man like you, Stanescu, I would have aimed for just above the eyes.

* *

Only the rattle of cutlery deep in the woman's satchel alerted him. Ethan stood as they entered his clearing, the woman expressionless and positioned before him at an angle that allowed her thin frame to come to rest like a minute hand at five minutes to twelve. A man and two young girls stepped tentatively into the campsite, the man instantly offering both hands in the traditional greeting.

"We're friends, yes? We're the family Crainac."

Before Ethan could reply, the man grasped his hand and began pumping it slowly, then more emphatically. Thereafter came a series of short bows, the elder Crainac seemingly locked in a posture of submission.

Ethan pulled the man upright. "You come from Galati? Adjud? Where?"

"Nouca, a little place that means nothing to you near Roznov. We've been walking for too many days." He coughed in an unbroken fit and for a moment his chest contracted with the effort. He emptied the mucus into his sleeve. "Do you have food—anything? Something soft if you have it. My wife—she ah, she can't chew."

Ethan studied the family for a moment, now seeing why the woman could not stand erect. Only a thin membrane of leather remained on the shoe where her right heel had been attached.

The man loosened the fabric straps that secured his skull cap. "You've heard the news?"

Ethan shrugged. The question from the diary of a mad man. When had he last seen a newspaper or heard a wireless broadcast?

"Everywhere, good reports! Romania will soon be free. The krauts have been stopped in their tracks. Some say the Russian Army has already crossed the frontier. That swine Antonescu hasn't been seen in weeks."

Crainac embarked on another fit of coughing, and then rattled on about the fields they had covered, the difficulties in crossing the tributaries of the Danube. "On some days, all we had to eat were green plums."

"Why are you living like animals out here?" Ethan said. "Look at your children, your wife. I know these forests. You can't stay here, you won't survive."

"But how can we know for sure? We hear so many lies." He stepped closer to Ethan. "And what do you know of the Russian soldiers? I have to protect my daughters—my wife. Everybody knows what they do to women and girls."

Light snow began to coat the branches above them. Minutes later an easterly wind lashed Ethan's sodden campsite. Ethan moved the children to a dry pine bed. "Can it be any worse than this? You can come with me or die here."

Before he could respond, Ethan knew what their next move would be. "Listen carefully—when did you last cross a major road?

"We stay away from the roads in daytime."

"That's not what I asked—did you hear any movement, any sounds of soldiers? There could be Russian columns moving close to us. They could help us. We're refugees." He surveyed the children. "All of us."

The man glanced at his wife. She nodded without expression.

"Then we retrace the route we have followed for the last few days." The man turned on his heel. His family took up position behind him. With one sentence from their father, they had all become Ethan's subjects.

"Another question." Ethan knelt, sketched a circle in the snow and marked several crude compass points. What did you see when you stood and searched the sky? The man rubbed his forehead. "Only one night we camped on high ground. No clouds."

Ethan pounded a fist into the snow. "What did you see? Quickly—we don't have much time."

"Not as easy as you think...I saw bright lights in the distance." He eyed his wife for confirmation. "Yes, they were to the west. I'm almost sure." He marked the position. "Maybe four, six kilometers from where we camped."

Ethan stood and positioned himself after the compass needle had aligned itself. He searched for any amber wash against the horizon. Clouds concealed all. After the Crainac family was bedded down, Ethan oriented himself on the compass once again. A blank slate.

Just after midnight he made his third attempt, this time with the binoculars he had found in the guardsman's knapsack. He found no suggestion of light until he turned due west once again.

"Yes!" he shouted.

Crainac stirred in his sleep at the sound.

* *

Ethan had everyone up and moving at dawn. Within two days they had broken out of the tree line and onto the perimeter road. The roadway was alive with troop transports. A squadron of Russian bombers droned overhead.

The entrance gates to Dumanovka had been drawn back and chained to their posts. A Russian armored column idled along the roadway leading into the camp. A tank crewman relaxed on the turret of his tank, enjoying a morning cigarette. Ethan surveyed the scene. Refugees streamed through the gates. Were they inmates from other camps? Deserters from the Iron Guard? Could Ana or Cyprian be somewhere in the mélange of faces? Teodor....Irina? Their faces began to press in on him.

The camp headquarters stood silent, its entrance door swinging listlessly in the wind. The assembly area was strewn with the cardboard remnants of food ration boxes.

A short walk took him to an assembly area, now filled with camp inmates. And from this welter of gray figures came the cries of recognition, of exuberant questions, and of despair. They swam in all directions; some simply turning in circles in wonder at what was occurring; others drawn up against the fence, eyes darting from one sentry tower to the next.

Bewildered Russian soldiers stood at intervals around the area. Already small groups of children and adolescents were standing with their backs to the wire, searching for anyone, anything that might be recognized. One boy of about ten had taken a fragment from a ration box and held it under his chin, WERBOCZY scrawled in bold letters.

Ethan approached the assembly. Hostile eyes turned to him. He offered no greeting.

"I'm looking for my family, Itzkavitz. Itz-Ka-Vitz, yes? Teodor...or my mother Dora, my sister Irina. Tolnici! Do you know anyone from Tolnici? Tolnici, anyone?" Vacant stares.

He stepped closer. At a signal known only to them, the group turned their backs to Ethan and moved closer to the wire.

Further along, he found three women wandering the courtyard. "From Tolnici?" "Nearby," one of them said. "Bacau."

His pocket wallet had become stained and saturated. But his mitzvah picture was there, along with his pocket watch. He pointed to his parents and Irina. "My family—Dora, Teodor and Irina, my older sister." He stabbed at the print. "Do you know any of them?"

One of the women studied the picture. She sighed and returned it. "Here there are hundreds of faces like these. And the people you're looking for—they don't look like this picture anymore. "

Ethan studied her for a moment, unsure how to proceed. "Also my little sister, Ana, about fourteen years, long brown hair." He held the picture closer. "There, beside my other sister."

"I'm sorry," the woman said. "The Russians are bringing all the inmates to this livestock area. No one is allowed into the barracks. Watch out for the soldiers. Some of them are animals."

A burst of Romanian and Czech voices interrupted the conversation. Several men had surrounded a figure backed up against the barbed wire. An inmate cursed the figure. After a moment, he brought himself under control and attempted to spit at him. His target had drawn in his arms and swayed from side to side, waiting to snap the neck of any emaciated being who might try to extract revenge. The epithets rained down on him. He retorted with a mouthful of saliva, then began punching a path through the assembly. Two men stopped him. One carried an oak club; the other had somehow located a scythe. They began sweeping the surface ahead of him, driving him back to the wire fence. Their quarry stubbornly attempted to grasp the foot of the implement. The chorus of onlookers now increased their tempo and a large stone found its mark. A curtain of blood instantly covered his eye and the figure wheeled to his left to compensate for it. At this, his assailant pivoted to one side and wrenched the scythe toward the rib cage. His ally began to wave the club as if to distract their victim, but there was no need. The figure fell to the ground without a word, his lower rib cage cleaved down to the waistline. Out of the rusty gash poured equal amounts of blood and entrails. The men turned away, exhilarated and stunned at what they had done. One of the men raised both fists and shouted "For you Rollo, for you!"

The scene failed to arouse anything in Ethan more than a flash of curiosity. He turned to the inmate beside him. "A kapo?"

"One of the worst. He ran the quarry." He pointed to the figure on the ground. Someone had pulled his shirt over his face. "Marcus. He deserved worse than this."

"What could be worse than this?" Ethan asked.

"What we do couldn't equal what he did at the quarry," the man said. "Those poor bastards up there—a lot of them much too old to be throwing picks and shovels—and he worked them until they dropped. Wouldn't give them permission for anything. Told me they had to piss and shit where they stood. And when they couldn't stand any longer, over they went into the bottom of the slit. Head over heel. Marcus enjoyed it."

Ethan reached for his mitzvah photo and pointed to Teodor. "My father. He worked somewhere around here."

The man glanced at the photo. "After months here you don't look at faces or remember names. You make no friends—too many informers. All I can tell you is that many of the pit men came from Adjud and Tolnici. That one with the big blade who got to Marcus? He says he worked up there. But I heard a story that it was his brother. And he vowed to make Marcus pay for it when liberation came. Who knows the truth?"

The fistful of inmate workers now grew larger as additional barracks were unlocked. The men broke into applause when they saw Marcus' corpse. A moment later they signaled that their thirst for retribution was not yet been sated.

Ethan turned to see the rear ranks add a clutch of new faces and then divide, as if a receiving line were about to be formed. Two inmates clamored for clearance as they escorted several figures into the center ground.

"Make room!" one of them shouted. Two other men stepped forward and pulled Marcus's torso closer to the fence. The three figures in the center ring wore kapo jackets. Their wrists were bound with rags. Discarded flour sacks had been placed over their heads. They were made to turn and face the chorus of inmates.

"So are we to see more justice this morning?" a man asked as he stepped beside Ethan.

An inmate silenced the assembly and pulled the hood from the figure before him.

"This one worked the women's block, K Section. She did it for better rations. Claims she didn't screw any of the guard. She says she's from Roznov. Can anyone vouch for her story?"

Ethan heard only unintelligible muttering.

"Anyone? If not she'll be handed over to the Russians."

Applause.

The next figure turned to face the onlookers and the hood was snatched away. Ethan steadied himself amid the press of figures and studied the face. A young man of no more than thirteen, standing taller than Ethan remembered him, but with the same eyes and sharp brow.

The refrain began again: "Can anyone vouch for him? He claims to be from Bacau."

Ethan worked his way to the front of the onlookers. He studied the face a second time.

"That's the young kapo who threatened to run a fork though me on the march from Tolnici." Ethan stood back for a moment from the figure, then turned to the crowd. "I ask you to spare him. Look at him—he's only a boy."

Another voice said, "Him? He cracked the skull of my husband because he was late for roll call. That's no innocent child."

Behind Ethan the front circle of inmates listened to the woman's grievance and began beating their feet on the ground, the traditional signal directed at the condemned. "Then we will proceed," the inmate leader said.

As if on a signal known only to him, a wordless man came forward and quickly drew the boy's hood over his eyes. No one noticed the garrote until it was instantly secured around the boy's neck. The executioner rotated the torso to shield it from view. The legs thrashed for a moment. The boy's body slipped to the ground without a sound.

"Next we have another female kapo. She claims to be of our blood. From the village of Tolnici." He stripped the bandana from the head. "Can anyone vouch for her?"

No one answered. Ethan stepped closer. "Please let her speak."

The man peered at him. "Who are you? Do you know her?"

Ethan repeated his request. And at the sound of his voice, the figure lifted her head and turned to him. He seized her hands. "Say something, and say it quickly." Her eyes remained colorless, her expression empty.

Yet there was something there. He asked himself what he could do to recapture the time between where they stood at that moment and the streambed that led to a place of tranquility.

"Please. Say my name. Ethan...says Ethan my brother."

She looked at him from an oblique angle, in the manner a blind person attempts to center on another person. She remained silent. Her lips were ribbons of scarlet with a clumsy smear on the right side. Small blush marks of ochre dotted her cheeks. A rusty barrette held her hair in place.

"Remember our picnics? ...the streambed that belonged only to us? And the children? The forest near the Stret where you were going to search for them. Remember?"

The inmate leader grew impatient. "Do you know this girl or not? We have many more to deal with. Look, here come another six."

Ethan again heard the chorus of feet striking the ground. He moved behind Ana and faced the onlookers. "My sister, she comes from an honorable family in Tolnici. We owned land. This girl was a beautiful child when I last saw her. Now look at her."

"She's not the only victim standing here today," a woman called. "Can you tell us why she became an informer? Why she took secrets of our food network, of how we kept so many alive, and passed them on to the kapo bosses?"

A mutter of agreement. Another woman stepped forward and faced Ana. "Here is the question for you, Miss Whoever-you-are. We know you changed your name when you put on that uniform. You come from L block, don't you? I remember you. We kept you with food—until you moved to Kapo Stotski's room, didn't you? Then we were no longer of any use to you, were we? You're a little whore who turned on us."

Ana faced him, coughed once and began to sob. She turned to the onlookers, her hand extended as if seeking a pardon. Two inmates immediately stepped forward and pulled her beside the young man from Bacau.

Ethan didn't wait for her to reply. He unstrapped his rifle, and turned to the mob. "I lost members of my family here. You've got no quarrel with me. But don't lie to me. My sister...a whore?" He lowered the barrel. "I'll ask you just once to step aside."

Ana smiled. She brushed his hand for a moment, her fingers coming to rest on his wrist.

Within minutes they were behind the barracks of L block. Ana led him by the hand. "This is a kapo barracks. The Russians don't care about it." She began making her way up a wooden stairwell and stopped abruptly at the first landing. She loosened her head kerchief and wiped her face. "Stotski?" she called, searching the landing on the second floor. "Stotski!" She grabbed Ethan's arm. "Do you know him? He's good to me, he might have food for us. He got permission for me to sleep in his bed, where it's warm. Come on." She began climbing the second flight. Ethan pulled himself up the last stairs and saw a wooden door, evidently cobbled together from shipping crates. The door handle and lock had been shattered and lay in pieces on the floor. The door itself swung listlessly on one hinge. Inside, pieces of cookware were scattered across the sink. Two army issue beds stood upright at one end of the room. The bedding had been stripped away and rested in the center of the room. Ethan saw that the metal bed frames had been lashed together with barbed wire. Next to them a man's boot stood upside down. Above it an industrious spider had spun an intricate pattern over one edge of the only window.

Ana gasped and began pacing the room.

"He's not here. He said he'd be here. He said he would wait. And look—the few things I had hidden..." She fell to her knees and began pawing through the bedding. "The Russian soldiers have been here. I can smell them."

"This was your barracks room?" Ethan asked.

"Mine was not fit for a pig. This was Stotski's room. As long as I did what he told me, I could stay here. He said we could make plans for after the war."

A moment later she was at the window, prying the sash open until her fingernail snapped. The window jammed almost immediately and she cursed herself. She turned and scrambled out to the landing and began scanning the area below. "This can't be. Where is he?" She learned further over a rough-sawn handrail. "All foreign faces..." She turned to Ethan, as if pleading for the truth of the matter. "He said he'd wait for me. Even on the day of liberation, he said he'd wait."

Ethan joined her and allowed her a moment to recover. Dumanovka had not returned the Ana he had known. Something had been taken away, the degree of damage much too difficult to understand at that moment. Best perhaps to return to earlier times.

"Ana, remember the Fishof children...how you cared so very much for them, how you looked for them?"

"Stotski!" She walked down the stairs now, still looking in all directions. She turned to look at Ethan. "I never looked for the children."

"Never mind, it's all right. Come on, we'll be a family again."

"Wait, Ethan. I knew there were never any lost children. I was just playing along." Ethan stopped. "Why?"

She smiled for a moment and touched his cheek. "I was always your little girl."

* *

The camp infirmary revealed the same degree of chaos as the main assembly area where he had found Ana. They were seen by a young man who claimed his medical credentials were from a Hungarian university. Ethan did not release Ana's hand as he listened.

"You'll have to trust me. I come from Budapest. Pulled from my car at a border check point, been here for six months. This is no medical facility, I can tell you. Only one doctor worked here before liberation and he was an alcoholic. Absolutely useless. Never mind. We do what we can."

When he returned with Ana after the examination, he made a point of standing directly in front of her and speaking in a deliberate manner, holding Ethan to one side of him.

"Now, Ana, when you're better, you'll go with your brother and he'll take care of you. You must concentrate on getting nourishment and rest. When you have your strength back, he'll take you home, back to where you belong. You would like that, wouldn't you?"

Ana reached for Ethan's arm.

"Good. Good. Now a moment please." He pulled Ethan to one side. "It's a matter of simple trauma. Some events she refuses to discuss. Other times she is confused about when they took place or she fears they might still take place. There's probably not a single inmate here who'll not suffer from the same confusion. She's also anemic and disoriented. She should remain under medical care for a few days. I'll find a bed. The Red Cross is here with food and clothing. We'll keep her under observation. Don't place much value in what she says to you. She's not herself and won't be for some time. Eventually the person you remember will come back to you—but it will take time." He glanced at Ana. "Does she have other family here?''

"I am hoping we'll find other family" Ethan said. "Do you know anything of this man Stotski? Did she tell you what went on with the two of them? He was the kapo in her barracks."

"If he's anything like the others, he stripped off his uniform when the Russians got close. Some just walked away, others commandeered trucks and headed for god knows where. Now please—others are waiting. Let me find a bed for your sister."

"She doesn't leave my sight until I find my mother and my sister. We'll get fresh clothing for her and continue searching."

"She needs rest, comforting."

"Not here and not now."

As they made their way among fresh groups of refugees, Ana tugged on his sleeve. "Why can't I stay with the doctor? He's nice."

"He's no doctor" Ethan said.

* *

Dumanovka was rapidly transforming itself from a forced labor camp into a displaced persons center. A wooden barracks for camp guards had been emptied and designated with a crudely painted sign:

ALLIED HIGH COMMISSION-INTERNATIONAL TRACING SERVICE

Ethan and Ana made their way along a drafty corridor until they came upon a semi- circle of desks, each bearing a designation of their services. Desks were grouped by nationality. One bore a more helpful title: _kinderaum (_ ages 12-18). The attendant explained to Ethan that two adjacent barracks had been cleaned and provided sleeping quarters and meals for displaced children. "It's still very confused here, children waiting to be found by their families, children separated from their families at one of the smaller camps, and some we know only as orphans."

Ethan listened intently, his arm enclosing Ana's shoulder.

She easily anticipated his next question. "They're safe here. Each youngster wears a numbered badge; all the entrances are supervised by our staff. This girl with you is..."

"My sister, fourteen years old. She should be here only a few days at most. I'm searching for our mother."

Ana offered no objection. When Ethan looked in on her several hours later, she slept with a faint smile crossing her lips. What he could not tell her was that the search for Dora may yield nothing.

* *

What was once the Commandant's Board blossomed with names and locations of the displaced, along with war bulletins from the Allied authorities? It was reported that many of the Russian soldiers who had first liberated the camp were on their way to Berlin. One family claimed that Kapo Stotski had been picked up a short distance from the camp, dressed as a farm girl. The Red Cross now had representatives at a temporary administration building, and a refugee relief agency stood by with a convoy of food and medical supplies.

Dumanovka itself had taken a new identity. Buses and transport lorries became a routine sight. Reports circulated that displaced families were swelling the camp population to the breaking point. Transport was being arranged—often on a compulsory basis—to return many to their home villages. Others not yet reunited or found to be orphans were being sent further west to major repatriation centers in Austria and Germany. The turbulent activity left little time for grieving.

Within days, the tracing service began posting the identities of families searching for lost relations. The board was updated at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Ethan was on hand for each update as were hundreds of others. Later that week he learned that Teodor was among the missing. The updates invariably set off a fury of pushing and shoving. Fists were often the only weapon available to insure a moment to glimpse the fresh postings. The assembly rose and subsided, the notice board drifting by like a channel marker in an ocean shipping channel. Voices leaked pleasure or resentment as the selected names were erased and others chalked in.

Someone behind him began reciting the names as they appeared, reading aloud as if to a child. Ethan's right arm shot into the air, his body began twisting and turning toward that voice, the voice of long ago bedtime stories, a voice absent from his hearing since the march from Tolnici. He swam toward her, refusing to respond to the cord of bodies compressed around him. Someone cursed him. It didn't matter. He reached over an elderly man and grasped his mother's shoulders, then her hands. The flesh on her shoulders was that of a small bird, her hands—those of a man, much too large and covered with a carapace of whitish skin. But she was whole, standing before him. Alive, not the vacant eyes he feared, not the blank indifference he heard in Ana's voice.

Their voices collided with each other in the rush to tell how in all happened, to learn if they were the same people, to plumb the spirit of the other and determine if anything remained of what they once had been.

Ethan escorted her away from the din. She walked slowly but purposefully, glaring now and again from one side to the other. He compressed her hands between his, both of which were bound in thick dressings. She surveyed the path they had just taken and turned to him. "So my Teo is not here?"

Ethan gestured to a faint ridge line outside the camp perimeter. "That's the quarry where they told me he worked. That's all they know. It'll take time to learn everything. Hundreds are missing. But there is good news. I've found Ana. She's resting at the _kinderaum."_

"Can I..." Dora began to sob.

"Don't worry. She's recovering. She'll be good in a few days and you can see her."

"No more waiting. I want to see her now." She looked away and searched her pockets for something to absorb the tears. A moment later she broke into a more intense turmoil.

Ethan grasped her arm and steadied her. "Come on, we can walk and see Ana."

The sobbing now came in smaller episodes. "I have no strength in my legs. I'm not able to walk more than a few feet."

He gently scooped his mother into his arms. His first thought was that he was carrying a bag of bones.

* *

By week's end the relief authorities had erected a large tent. Hot meals were served throughout the day. Dora set at a wooden table, a crumpled figure fringed in ash. Ana sat between them. She carefully drew the liquid against the edge of the bowl and then lifted it to Dora's lips.

Ethan listened intently, silently urging her to close the circle, to tell of Irina.

"We all worked under one roof. Very noisy and dusty. I sometimes caught a glimpse of Irina. She was a good worker, very energetic, but her hands couldn't stand the punishment. They turned purple with infection and she was sent to the infirmary. We met there while I waited for an iodine treatment."

"And since that time?"

"She didn't return to her bench."

"When was this?"

Ethan, my son! It's impossible to remember such things. Time has been so nothing here. Weeks seem months and now months seem like weeks. I paid a day's bread ration to a seamstress in my block for hand wraps. "When we moved to the finishing sheds to cut the rock, the machine would send splinters in every direction. One woman at my bench lost an eye. Without protection, our fingers were hit by splinters all the time. Our hands would get infected and swell up, and we couldn't move our fingers. But we were still required to meet the engineer's standard for foundation block—no more than two millimeters. Ethan, can you imagine your mother in such a scene?

"If we fell outside the standard, the strap would come out. They would hit us everywhere except the arms and hands. My guard favored around the knees and buttocks."

The questions cascaded from Ethan:

"Would she have been put to work somewhere until her hands healed?"

"Would she be seen as useful without the use of her hands?"

"Would the doctor have given her a medical excuse for a period of time?"

Dora could answer none of them. The sole question he didn't ask was the one he feared the most: was Irina among those who had been found unfit to work?

* *

Identifications Ethan had first seen on the bulletin board only a week earlier were now being assembled into stacks of folders strewn throughout the interior of the office where he waited. Several civilian workers, wearing bright blue and white armbands, were at work. He took his place in line and waited. The queue seemed not to move. At dusk, they were told to return the next day. The following day as he stood he wanted to offer a prayer for Irina. He closed his eyes and attempted to recite to himself one of the verses he had once known so well. He struggled to clear his mind and concentrate. He heard no prayer, felt no solace. Nothing but a brittle emptiness.

The person behind him nudged him and gestured. He was being called to one of the desks. Its designation: Romanian DP. Before he could identify himself, the desk officer, a man in his fifties, shook his hands in frustration. "This is impossible. Even the SS kept records! Our Romanian countrymen"—he fixed his eyes on Ethan—"decided to arbitrarily murder as many Jews as possible. But we have no records of who is lost and who remains. So each day we count the living and assume the rest are lost.'' His hands came to rest on a sheet of names with no entries beside them.

Despite the despair he heard in the man's voice, Ethan knew that he had found someone who spoke with a conscience. Behind his desk stood a large wooden board with pictures of young children, each holding a placard in front of them with their surname in bold letters. Some children were smiling. Hope was being restored. Parents would be found. Authorities such as this man were working day and night to unravel identities and undo the legacy of Dumanovka. He scanned the board intently. How would Irina appear? Her hair could be quite different, perhaps the same shape but longer behind the ears, more of a henna color. He peered at one girl who wore a barrette on her left side. But she looked Russian. Here was another one. The eyes were similar. Perhaps the eyes are the key. This one had a serious skin infection. The condition had caused the socket of the infected eye to bulge. As he scanned the pictures, he noticed the toll that camp life had exacted from the children. Here a photo of a boy whose hairline had already begun receding. Two frames to the right of him a child somehow made asexual by the loss of hair.

Skin and eye maladies were common. In instances where a full figure was photographed, the subject appeared disproportionate. Ethan studied the picture of Nastase, identified only by a tag: "Thought to be from Hungary." Now he saw it: the facial features had somehow accelerated in aging while the torso and limbs remained those of a child. What one saw was the mask of an adult face atop an adolescent body. He thought how he might appear. He could not remember when he had last seen a mirror. While waiting for the resettlement officer, he vowed to avoid mirrors and abandon any hope that he might appear as he once did.

As he continued to review the faces peering out from the gray fiberboard to which they were attached, Ethan realized that a certain larceny had taken place. His youth, along with those on the board, had been taken from him. What innocence and simple joy might have taken place during those years they could not know. What he did know as he stood in the dusty corridor is that adulthood had been thrust upon them. The faces that looked out at him were without attachment to any person or any place. They were adrift in a sea of thieves. And those who committed the act of grand theft would never be found and brought to justice. He studied another photo of a teenage refugee with a thick knot of black hair and glasses which appeared too large for his head. Something about the glasses bound together with black tape reminded him of Cyprian.

"Why?" the face asked him.

During his interview, Ethan offered what little information he had of Irina. The desk officer brightened somewhat. "If she was in the infirmary when the Russians came through the gate, we may have some luck. If she was at large in the camp, it may take much longer." He reached out and touched the back of Ethan's hand. "In some cases, we may never know. I'm telling you the truth, but we can hope for the best. I'll search these files tonight." He gestured to a row of folders behind him. Several clerks were adding to the assembly as he spoke. "Come back in two days. I may know something by then."

"I don't have that much time left," Ethan said. "Will you be working tonight on these records?"

"As always."

"Then I'll stay. You can use extra fingers, yes?" The desk officer welcomed his assistance.

When he returned the following morning, Ethan found the queue twice the length of the previous day and the DP posters of children now stretched in an arc behind the desk officers. The man recognized Ethan and stood to greet him. "We're in luck. Your sister—Irina?—was among the first to be evacuated from the infirmary. She had massive infections of both hands and required immediate surgery. Specialized care at a modern hospital was urgent." The man paused, allowing Ethan to catch up. He spoke an idiom unfamiliar to Ethan.

"The Rothschild Hospital in Vienna is where she was taken. An American facility. She'll be well cared for there."

"And her hands?"

"That information I don't have. I'm going to issue you an exit visa and a transport voucher. You're free to go to this hospital and learn what you can."

* *

He had little to pack for his train journey and suitcases were scarce commodities. His exit visa entitled him to a series of health inspections, mandatory delousing, and the issue of two dark blue work shirts, trousers, and boots. Each item had been in service to a previous owner, but it didn't matter. For him, they were things of great value because they were free of the pervasive odor of the camp.

His mother embraced him when she learned of Irina. No tears would come, but she appeared to take on a renewed sense of energy. She grasped Ethan's shoulders.

"We can be a family again. And you, my little one, must be the man of the house." A note of anticipation rose in her voice. "Let's hope that our home still stands and the fields are not ruined. Please God, you'll find Irina and together we can open the shop again. You can manage the tenants and bring the land back to life. You're a man now, and it's a man's work."

"Before you go home, look for Cyprian. He may have a young girl with him. Liliana. They can help you once you reach home."

Ethan studied Dora's dressings and questioned if her ravaged hands would ever work again.

# [Vienna  
1945](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

The unheated rail car wound its way toward Budapest. Refugees choked the wagon. After it drew inside Hungary, the defeated columns of the _Wermacht_ came into view. As the train gathered speed, a blur of green obscured his view. Moments later the scene focused again and Ethan studied the exodus to the west. A tangled string of _leiterwagens_ , a few civilian automobiles, a column of retreating artillery cannons. Along the roadside lay the carcasses of horses, first used to carry ammunition for the big howitzers and now being butchered for food.

Ana and Dora came to mind: he knew he had done right by them—draw Displaced Persons cards, search the notice boards for any word of Cyprian or Lili. A reunion of all of them no longer seemed impossible. He extinguished the overhead lamp and lapsed into sleep without a single prayer.

At dawn, the train drew into the outskirts of Vienna. Ethan gazed through the streaked rail car window and in the reflected light stared back at a stranger. His eyes—when had they sunk back into their sockets? His skin had bubbled up around the perimeter of his scalp; his hairline now revealed a thatched appearance—almost comical. He attempted to smile. His expression lifted to a wan indifference.

The carriage began to sway from side to side as the train threaded into Vienna's _hauptbahnhof._ The day brightened. A Thursday morning. He stood to shake off the cobwebs of sleep.

* *

The Rothschild Hospital stood on private grounds on _Leopoldstadt._ It had once been a private sanitarium for wealthy city residents. Now the entrance had been cordoned off by military police; Soviet and American flags flanked the cobblestone entrance. Inside the courtyard, Ethan realized that this once elite medical treatment facility had become the principal DP center for central Europe. Tents and Quonset huts had been erected on the old hospital's tennis courts. A large playground had already been set aside for children. Everywhere, it seemed, reunions were taking place. In the crowded passageways, between the temporary quarters—shouts of recognition, sudden embraces, and tears, so many tears.

He found the central registry inside the hospital reception area. The lines were lengthier than those at Dumanovka. Eventually he located an expressionless clerk who confirmed that Irina had been admitted two weeks earlier. Look for her in the convalescent surgical wing, he was told. A French team had been brought in to deal with the specialized hand surgeries. The Allied authorities were said to be sending in medical assistance as quickly as possible.

"Your sister? She's lucky," the attendant said, speaking a slower pace after Ethan signaled that he was not fluent in German. "She arrived days before the refugee population here exploded." With that bit of information, the attendant waved him through.

Ethan descended a wide staircase and determined that the Surgical Wing was actually a separate structure. It was located some distance from the area where he stood and as he exited, he came upon neat rows of temporary refugee quarters, each of them identified by their national colors. He recognized Polish, Greek, Czech and Russian flags. In the distance he spotted the Romanian colors.

A tug at his sleeve. A man with a bandage over his right eye and ear questioned him in a language he could not understand. Further on, a young woman holding a small child attracted his attention. She held a yellowed snapshot of a young man in military uniform. His knowledge of Yiddish helped his rudimentary German; he gathered that the woman's husband was unaccounted for. Ethan shrugged. The woman immediately began the same plea with the person behind him.

He found Irina upright in a metal bed, its posts burnished to bare metal from years of use. Her forearms were wrapped in plaster casts. Steel cables extended from her hands to a pulley apparatus suspended from the yellowed plaster ceiling. Ethan moved to embrace her and then realized it was impossible. He lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration, circled around to the other side of her bed, and seated himself. He could feel his face dissolve into a smile. The expression he witnessed on the train was a false image, he told himself. Irina could always bring back a measure of happiness. He saw a small vanity mirror on the opposite side of the bed. He avoided its reflection and turned to face her.

"I don't look at it either," Irina said.

What followed was a moment of appraisal by two of the surviving children of Teodor Itzkavitz: Irina, struggling with the reality of her brother somehow appearing in the din of a busy hospital corridor; Ethan, anxious to spend not a moment speaking of Teodor. And he knew in his heart that he must fill the room with any idle comment that would distract him from dwelling on what was before him: the most robust member of his family now diminished by injury and loss of weight.

"Irina, be proud of me. I've found you here. Only a few days ago, it seemed impossible. I found Mother only days after you left Dumanovka. The tracing service told me you might be here, but my god, there are thousands of people streaming in here for help."

He looked at Irina more intently. Say anything, he told himself. Anything to move away from the spectral figure that lay before him. "Mother is as well as any of us and wants to return to Tolnici. Stay close to her, you'll need each other."

To his ear, his words were not persuasive or reassuring. They suggested the wooden words of a fugitive, of one deadened to ordinary human experiences. Was it even possible to become Irina's blood brother once again? But he had found her. There was no need to say anything more. For a brief moment, he saw himself sitting before her as the most remarkable person in the world.

"The doctors say another week to ten days before I can be released. Can you wait for me?

Ethan's eyes watered for a moment. He shifted in his chair.

"Ethan, you need to know this. Don't turn away. They cut two fingers off my left hand. Only days ago they were considering taking the entire hand. The infection was everywhere. Now Dr. Longre believes I'll recover some use of my fingers. The worst is over."

She smiled, with the same instinctive gesture as when she first cleared the wooden bar in the hayrick. Always try harder, she had instructed him at that moment and he had not forgotten her counsel.

"Enough about me!" Irina said. "Tell me about father."

An attendant glided by with a small metal trolley, its wheels striking the spaces between the floor tiles in a flat rhythm. Ethan gently grasped her hand cast. "He's unaccounted for. It's possible he worked as a laborer in the quarry. That's all anyone could tell me. Can you believe our father—a man of learning and devotion to God—would die in the belly of a quarry? If I could, I would personally lead the Iron Guard in front of my own firing squad. And no blindfolds, let them see and hear it all." He glanced away for a moment and collected himself. "But Tolnici is free now and we can return. I don't know how we'll buy livestock and repair what may be left of the house. Teodor would expect us to pick up the pieces. I'll do my best for both of you." Matters remained unresolved. He could see it in her expression, the eyes etched in something other than full understanding. He turned from her and began circling the cubicle in silence.

"Irina, I'm standing here not knowing what to say. Your condition is tender. I hesitated before because...I thought it would be better to wait. Then I asked myself. Why? I've found Ana—she's getting treatment at Dumanovka."

Tears came quickly to her. Her arms drew the cables taut as she reached for him.

"Is she injured? What? Tell me she's not hurt." She pinched her eyes shut. "I can take no more after Teodor."

"The hurt is more inside her" Ethan said. "She speaks like a person who is empty inside. The doctor said it will take time to recover."

"Did you learn why she wandered off that day in the orchard?"

"She was trying to please me by playing a silly children's game she didn't believe in. Somehow, she fell into the hands of the Guard."

* *

Visiting hours were closing. Irina led the Kaddish prayers for Teo and Sandu. How a merciful God could have allowed all this to happen was never far from his mind. He listened to the chant. It seemed a faint echo.

In the days after the raids on the village, what did I pray? I asked God to save my sisters from grip of the Iron Guard. Did he answer me? Un piz. ..a little. What he gave me instead was what remained of Ana and Irina. And in return he took Teodor and Sandu.

As he left the building, he surveyed scores of camp survivors, all pierced with the same bewildering thoughts of hope and abandonment.

That evening he made his way among the olive drab tents and plywood structures, searching for the Romanian section. Corrugated metal drainpipes had been dropped earlier in the day to provide a runoff from the heavy rains. One enterprising soul had cut the pipe into sections and each section now acted as a route marker.

Ethan knew he had reached his destination when he caught the sour scent of _mahorca_ tobacco. The cots inside were in the process of being claimed by several families. Two children carefully emptied their back packs. He carried nothing. He placed his cap on a nearby cot and began to circle the outside of the tent. It was now nearing dusk and the push to find sleeping space accelerated. Nearby he came upon the issuing facility and took a blanket, water container and towel.

Sleet drummed on the tent flap when he reentered. He found his cap now resting three rows back. He would be sleeping in an outer row and the meager space between his sleeping area and the edge of the tent was now filling rapidly with card players. That evening, following a brief visit with Irina, Ethan attempted to rest. The tent was now at capacity. Gas lanterns hung from each end, the lamps hissing and casting a milky orange glow over the assembly. Nearby a table game was underway. Four men sat around a large suitcase that served as a playing surface. The conversation eventually found its way to the old country, to the persecutions, and inevitably, to the labor camps.

"Do you know of Radu?"

"What became of the family Stern?"

"I heard she buried all her jewels and diamonds in a ditch in the tool shed."

"I saw it with my own eyes. They smashed everything in the synagogue. The Guard holligans were using it as a holding pen for when the deportations began."

"Remember Avescu? That bastard was a collaborator. I knew it all along. We soon took care of him."

Ethan dozed and then awoke to hear the murmurs of the children being seen to by their mothers. The rain and chill had increased in intensity and extra blankets were being exchanged. Nearby the talk had turned to the Iron Guard.

"...and those green shirts. Sons of the soil! What cow shits they were. Stupid enough to believe all they were fed about the Catholics and Jews and homosexuals. I've heard some stories, I can tell you. My friend Iancu he spent some time at Dumanovka, he saw it firsthand."

Ethan turned to watch the hunched figures. A flutter of cards as the dealer began another round. "There was this one Iancu told me about. Came from our country, somewhere down south. Some of the guardsmen they pulled off the farms, did you know that? Couldn't use their heads." He checked his cards and grunted. "But not this one. He was in the middle of it all, more so if he could use his fists."

Ethan grabbed the wooden tent support to steady himself. He inhaled deeply and pulled his chair closer to the suitcase. "Was he dealt with after liberation? Was they able to arrest him?" The questions continued under a cloud of tobacco smoke. Two cards were tossed on the suitcase. A curse from one of the players.

"Who knows? So many of those weasels melted away when the Ruskies showed up. Iancu said his name was Petran, Puretn...something like that."

A small flask of schnapps began making the rounds.

"He can't match the one I heard about." The speaker wiped his lips and passed the plastic flask to the next player. "This bastard was notorious. A street thug when he was a kid. Then the Guard comes along and rewards him! And get this—he strangles the son of the mayor in the town just south of us. And he had one of the kid's brothers take pictures of the scene."

"This man, what was his name?" Ethan asked. Give nothing away, he reminded himself.

"Dunno."

Another player suddenly took an interest. "I think I've heard about him. This might be the one who ran patrols up in Moldavia district. Maybe Stansci... Stanhov..."

"How the hell would you know?" his companion said. "You said you came from Alba."

"Yeah, but I hear things. At my age I get a bit confused. I think it was Stansci..."

"It was Stanescu." A voice from the chain smoker next to the dealer.

"What became of him?" Ethan asked.

He took a seat at the man's right elbow. The game continued. Ethan resisted the impulse to seize the man's arm. After a few moments the expressionless face of his informant turned to him.

"The son of a bitch got out in time. Before the Russians came in, he ran to Germany and tried to register as a DP. But they got wise to him. The swine was gone the next day."

The man exchanged glances with Ethan. "What's it to you?"

"He rapes and kills Jews. I saw him do it. Is that enough or do you want more?" Chastened, the player paused and placed his cards on the suitcase. "Sorry. I hope what I heard may help you. There was a report that he made a dash to Offenberg in the French Zone. They recruit soldiers there for the French Foreign Legion. One rumor said he was looking to go to Indochina. Another war's brewing there. You searching for him?"

"In Indochina? I don't even know where it is."

"Save yourself the trouble," his confidant said. "Thousands of jerries are joining the Legion. You'll never find him."

* *

Morning. The stale odor of beer and cigarettes hung in the air. He silently closed the saturated tent flap and stood for a moment, shaking off the cobwebs. Stanescu receded into small fragments. He dismissed the image and quickly scaled the stairs to the surgical ward and Irina.

He tried for a lighthearted tone. "Please see it in your heart to forgive your brother. He can't return to Tolnici with you.'' Her spirit seemed to crumble. "Ethan. I..."

"There's something I must finish first. It has to do with what happened in the village, I have a soldier's name now. It can't wait. Please, no questions. Try to understand."

"It has to do with what that man did to me, doesn't it? I can see it in your eyes. Please don't hide things from me."

Ethan remained silent.

"Report what you know to the authorities. The police have offices here. Ethan, the war is finished. Let it rest. We can't bring back Teo or Sandu. Only Ana, Dora, and I should matter to you. How much are you prepared to lose? There's land to reclaim. We hope to have a house still standing. The past is dead."

Her gaze sharpened. "Mother and I need you." She attempted to lift her arms. "I'll have these hands to live with. You're so young, Ethan. Don't be rash. Do you still read your scriptures? What do they say of this business of vengeance?"

"I can't wait for God to intercede. He hasn't done much for us up until now, has he? Vengeance? No, it's honor, the honor of our family name." Ethan stood. "When Dr. Longre releases you, go to the Tracing Service and find transportation back to Dumanovka."

Irina's eyes narrowed.

"No, there's no danger," Ethan said. "The authorities are there and more are arriving every day. I told mother to wait for you—-she's in Block H-1. Ask if anyone has seen Cyprian or knows where he is. He might be with a girl about our age, Liliana. Tell them I didn't abandon them. Please."

Left unsaid was the disappointment in her eyes. For how many years had she influenced his thoughts and actions? Now as he walked quickly to the hospital exit, he saw Irina drifting away from him, and behind her appeared Dora who may never return to the person he knew as his mother. Teodor had already become hazy in the distance.

* *

Vienna is home to many embassies and consulates. The French embassy stood behind iron gates on a congested corner of _Ulrichstrasse._ Ethan stood before an attractive young woman whose reception desk rested upon an inlaid marble floor. Everything about her carried an element of refinement; a band of luxurious brown hair swept down to touch her shoulders; her fingers, quite obviously the product of hours of attention, were immaculate and rested atop the gleaming typewriter keys. Ethan was momentarily transfixed. He had never before seen a woman whose fingernails were not split and embedded with dirt. The young woman asked him if he could converse in German and he nodded. What did it matter if his German was rudimentary? For a moment, his business at the embassy dissolved. Before him was a young woman unblemished by life in the fields. She sat before him, flawless, serene and enormously distracting.

She repeated her question, her irritation apparent. "What is your business today, sir?"

"I...I could maybe speak with the Foreign Legion." He did not look at her. "And a person to help with the language, please. I come from Romania."

"I see. The Legion doesn't have offices in Vienna. We have a military attaché here who may be able to help you. We do have an Eastern European woman on staff here and she may be able to handle some of the translation. This may take some time understand? Please be seated."

Hours later, a lean figure entered the room in a desert khaki uniform, a row of coloured ribbons in perfect alignment over his left pocket, a series of gold chevrons on each sleeve. His head had been spotlessly shaved; the only facial hair Ethan could detect was a pencil thin moustache.

"Mr. Itzkavitz?" He extended his hand but did not relax his posture. "I'm Sergeant Major Dumont. Please come." Only a writing pad and pen sat on the desk of the small office. Behind it a small figure rose and waited to be introduced.

"This is Madame Kozinska. She will translate." The sergeant major picked up a pair of rimless brass reading glasses. "You claim that you are interested in joining the Legion?"

"During repatriation I learned that a friend had joined the Legion. I want to be like him." The deceit did not trouble Ethan. He looked directly at the Sergeant Major.

Dumont put his pen down and smiled. "And what brings you to this conclusion?

"With war over, there'll be nothing left in Romania. Ours is a poor country and now it will be even more so. I want to make a new start."

"Fine. But where does the Legion fit in?"

Ethan began described his journey from Tolnici to Dumanovka, his escape, Sandu, Teo, and the uncertainty of life after liberation. Of his plans for Stanescu he said nothing.

"I don't want to waste months in a DP camp waiting for somebody to decide my future. I want to leave Europe behind. Too much sadness. Perhaps in Africa, the Middle East—maybe Indochina—there's a future for me."

Dumont tapped a cigarette on the edge of his watch. He paused for a moment and allowed the blue smoke to lift.

"Conditions in the legion are very harsh, Mr. Itzkavitz. The pay is poor. I have recommended only a handful of men in the years I have been here at the embassy. Very few are physically and psychologically fit for legion service. Living conditions are spartan. At remote outposts, homosexuality can be common. "Many young men come through here seeking the Legion as a refuge. There are now more applicants than vacancies. Many German soldiers are joining, some for good reasons and some not so honorable. Because these men have already had active service, we can easily fill our intake. For now, we're not accepting anyone without prior military service."

* *

On his way along the cobblestone alley adjacent to the embassy, Ethan came upon a small café. It was not yet noon and a chill was still upon the day. He decided on a steaming coffee and sat at the bar. War time rationing had ended and it was now possible to buy genuine coffee once again. He felt exultant. Here was life! It was here at his fingertips, in the hum of traffic on the nearby streets, in the intoxicating scent of the receptionist, even in the iron demeanor of Sergeant Major Dumont. He was a human being again, a man who could make choices. Perhaps an enlistment in the Legion would be foolish. After all, there was no guarantee that it would lead to Stanescu. The alternative would be to return to Tolnici and take up what may be left of family life there. To do what Irina had pleaded for him to do. Or he could follow the Legion flag by joining another service and gaining enough experience to satisfy the sergeant major. But to what end? Three of four years taken away from his duty to Irina and Dora? By that time Stanescu and hundreds like him would be spread to the four winds.

Maybe Irina was correct. _Give it up_. Erase it from your conscience. Irina, of course, had her reasons for persuading me. She thought it possible that life as we knew it could start again in Tolnici. But return for what? Yes, there would be Dora and Ana to be attended to. But that time of need would someday end. And then what? A return to chipping ice off the water pump each winter morning? Arguing with the tax agent on the value of their acreage? Thumbing through the yellow and red sheets to prepare an appeal? And how to do that without Teo's help? Or easier to put 100 lei in an envelope and pass it to the agent with a wink?

The Iron Guard would be gone, but another gaggle of Jew haters would soon take their place. And the Eye would still be there, reminding everyone that the old ways were the best way. So, in five years the Itzkavitz family would still be trapped in the backwaters of the Danube. Should we expect something more?

He scanned the boulevard stretching away from his seat at the coffee bar. Shops were closing and women were crisscrossing the streets laden with groceries. Street lights flickered to life. The women clutched purses that could not have been cut and stitched in their homes; one young woman carried a shiny shoulder beg with a bright white buckle. It served no other function than to be bright and white. On the farm, Ethan recalled, every object had a least two purposes. Here it didn't seem to matter. Behind her two men walked in a purposeful gait with important looking leather cases at their side. Ethan drew a cigarette to his lips. A waiter appeared and extended a match.

Why remain in Tolnici when people are drinking rich coffee and working at jobs that don't involve shoveling cow shit or waiting for the electricity to come on in the evening? Ana, Irina listen to me. You deserve better. This city is full of magic things. We could find a place here. Think of it! Somewhere there's a Jewish quarter. There is bound to be a synagogue. Then we find a flat and bring Dora to live with us.

A moment later Teo came into view. Despite the moments when he seemed to lapse into fecklessness, Teo had always been there for him. Now only the pocket watch remained. Ethan slipped it from inside his waistband. The timepiece rested easily in his hand, an old friend still faithful to its keeper. The hasp whispered once and released the embossed cover. But the arc of the moon stood lifeless, the hour hand now a broken arrow at the base of the crystal.

* *

Ethan wandered from the _Ulrichstasse_ neighborhood later in the day and followed the route markers to _InnerStadt,_ Vienna's Inner City. The boulevard became wider as he progressed and soon he found himself amidst an assortment of coffee shops and _konditorei._ _._ Specialty foods were still scarce and most of the shops offered little more than muddy coffee and week-old newspapers. But the respite from the hospital cleared his mind if ever so briefly. He sat for a moment at a café and glanced at the patrons. It seemed that everyone had a companion for conversation. Two women sat nearby with hand bound books laid out like playing cards on the glass table surface. One of the women seemed to covet the books as a player would protect his hand of cards. Ethan surmised that the books were of some value and had been hidden during the war. Now with German soldiers gone from the city, book bartering and commerce of all sorts could resume.

To him it meant normalcy. But normalcy was just another mask, wasn't it? He asked himself this question repeatedly if for no other reason than to guard against a lapse into complacency. Yes, this somber city offered comforts on a level he could never have imagined as he waded through the Padina forest outside Dumanovka. But look again: surrounding him were faces that carried a different sort of history, and behind the expressions were words and phrases that he couldn't understand. Passers-by glanced at his table and continued walking, acknowledging nothing. He heard snatches of conversation, all webbed in the German tongue he had come to despise. What were they saying to themselves as he came into view? He read it in their faces: another _auslander._ Probably a young Jew on the run. Sitting there drinking coffee if you please. And him done up in a jacket and boots that came straight out of the camps.

His thoughts on the moments of undisturbed life in Tolnici returned to him, as if from a dusty closet where no sunlight or fresh air had penetrated. He could once again hear his father's voice, see Teo presiding at the end of the dining room table, Mihail prodding him on some sentence in scripture only the two of them understood. But on this mild evening in Vienna, only the image of Teo immobile in his brocade chair came to mind. Teo diminished after the Guard assault, Teo all too willing to place it all in the lap of God. He wanted to turn to him and tell him there were things he needed to say. But Teodor was lost to him and Ethan was too far away by then, in another life.

A waiter beckoned to him. Ethan smiled but did not speak. Too many questions were intruding on his thoughts. He found himself unfit to enjoy even for a moment the mellow scent of fresh bread drifting from the kitchen. As he walked, he caught a snippet of Yiddish from two women who passed him with their Saturday shopping bags. He quickly turned toward them and beckoned. Both women immediately became silent and circled away. The woman in the lilac coat with an unfinished sleeve and missing collar glared at him and increased her pace. Ethan did not return her silent reprimand and waited until the women turned onto _Roffmannstrasse._ Within minutes he had them in sight again and watched as they entered a butcher shop. An inconspicuous kosher sign rested on the back shelf of a display case.

Yes, the butcher was pleased to tell him, the neighborhood is regaining its identity. A bookshop for Jewish newspaper and books you say? One block over, _Siedlung Allee._

Two shelves carried the whole of the Jewish collection. Some were bound in wartime fibreboard, others carried what appeared to be leather binding. He searched both shelves and came upon one small book with illustrations of the major synagogues in the city. The store clerk balked at Ethan's offer of two marks for it, claiming that the book was retrieved from a wealthy Jewish customer whose library was ransacked during the occupation. "I know the cover is cheap, okay? But the pages and the bindings come from a collector, a man of some prestige in the Jewish community—or what's left of it."

"Two marks," Ethan repeated. "I'm a refugee. Please help me. I'm searching for a synagogue in this quarter. Can this book help me?"

The clerk abruptly took interest. "You'll need it to find your way."

"I need to locate a synagogue."

The clerk thumbed through the pages and pointed to an illustration of the _Stadttempel._

"This one is the closest to where we stand. Very old. The street address and other particulars are there as well." He held the book just out of Ethan's reach.

"I don't buy anything I can't touch. It looks like its falling apart. Let me hold it."

The clerk paused for a moment and asked the indulgence of the waiting customers. "As you please." He passed Ethan the guide.

Ethan stood aside for a moment and took note of the _Stadttempel's_ street address. He repeated it to himself several times.

The clerk held out his hand. "Okay, we can settle on five marks and you can be on your way."

Ethan shook his head. "I'm new to this city. Please understand. "

"Don't insult me. It's a fair a fair price. I'm not a fool." He reached for the book.

"A moment, _bitte._ " Ethan slipped the pocket watch onto the counter. "Silver, inlaid. My father's mitzvah gift."

The clerk's eyes widened. "Why offer such a thing of value?"

Ethan pressed the hasp. "See, the hands have become loose. They want adjusting. It's all I have."

"Sir, take the book and come back anytime you wish to barter."

* *

He carried on along the inner circle and within the hour came upon a city square that stood in awful relief to the café he had visited. Here the once proud stone homes with handsome tile roofs had turned into charred cavities, windows with ornate lead filigrees smashed to pieces, the fine finish work on the cornices scorched and blackened. At number 27 someone had scrawled _juden_ on the surface of the front entryway. Above the epithet a brass door knocker announced that this had once been the home of an affluent family.

A man walked swiftly along the sidewalk and turned to open the iron gate that separated number 30 from its derelict neighbors. Ethan called to him in his hollow textbook German-Yiddish. The man peered at him for a moment, scowled, and went on his way.

A bicycle bell sounded in the alley behind him and Ethan stood by as a young woman wheeled over to the curb, withdrew two loaves of bread from the basket, and proceeded along the sidewalk.

"Oy," Ethan called. She ignored him and increased her pace.

The walkway revealed no other figures. Above him two banks of wooden shutters drew closed. Vienna was preparing for the evening. A face peered down from one of the shutters. "Halloo" he called, arms extended. The shutter blades snapped shut.

He turned his attention back to the lone bicyclist. Nothing. He raced along the walk way and saw her making her way along the adjoining _Seitenplatz_ Square.

" _Sholom_ ," Ethan called. "Can you help me? I want to speak with the teacher, the rabbi. I'm told there's a synagogue nearby."

The girl abruptly drew up against the wall. "Who are you? What is your business?"

Ethan extended his hand. "My sister is a patient at the Rothschild Hospital. Family name Itzkavitz. I intend no harm."

The girl drew the loaves close to her chest. She studied him for several moments. "And you are looking for what place of worship?

Ethan described the Stadttempel. "I have a picture of it here in my book."

She studied his expression briefly and seemed vaguely reassured. "His home was damaged. He spends most of his time at the synagogue. No need for a picture. I know it well."

She led Ethan through a labyrinth of shattered buildings until they came upon a small brick edifice. An iron door stood on the opposite side. Just so. The least likely place for an entrance door. Ahead, two sets of narrow stairs. Once inside, she insisted he precede her. Only later did he realize that she never allowed him to move behind her. His shoulder brushed the spiny edge of an entranceway. It opened to a constricted walkway and it was then that Ethan felt a sense of unsettling confinement. He turned and studied the steps they had just taken, but the sheer mass of pointed stones along the passageway disguised any means of exit. The girl motioned as she stepped into a puddle of grey light. Her voice came to him in flat syllables. The walls absorbed any change in pitch.

"This is the Stadttempel," she said. "Every other house of worship for our people was destroyed. My father taught me that when _kristallnacht happened_ , this place was saved from destruction."

Ethan had far less interest in the history of the temple than his desire to spend time with the rabbi. "Can the teacher spend a few moments with me?"

He heard his footsteps before he appeared. The rabbi entered the foyer clad in a simple dark suit and slippers. A frayed cord held his reading glasses in place just below the tie. He extended a hand awash in liver spots.

A sense of relief welled up in Ethan. "Thank you for seeing me. I know I am a stranger. I'm not asking for food or money. I just need to talk."

"We have many refugees coming through here now that the fighting has stopped. You are welcome here. This is Leopoldstadt district, the ghetto for our people before the war." He motioned Ethan to his study.

"I am sorry to see so much destruction," Ethan said once they were seated. "Not to take your time but I have been on the run in Romania...''

When he had finished his account, the rabbi placed his hands on Ethan's. "Now calm yourself. We have all had our losses."

Ethan sat in tears. Words were useless.

"I'm sure that God knows you did what you could. Otherwise, you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me. I sit with so many survivors. I tell them they did what they could and now must carry on with the lives of the living. "Bear in mind that you're not alone. So many have lost so much. But listen to me: you're young. You're in good health, yes? Think of it. You'll no longer be living under a fascist government. You have choices now—whether to gather up your family and return to Romania or begin a new life elsewhere. And there is another opportunity open to you: Israel."

"The Holy Land?"

The rabbi smiled. "I'm sorry, how could you know? Israel is claiming its independence. It's imminent. The homeland will be ours and with that event comes all manner of opportunities for young people. We'll be building a new society after all."

"Rabbi, I know a little geography and I know the Middle East is a very far away. We're farmers from Romania, from a village that doesn't appear on any map. I lived in a house with a floor of dry mud. Now we're penniless."

"But God is with you. You traveled to a strange city to help your sister recover. You were fearful, anxious. Yet you found this synagogue. There are people here who can help you."

"Help me you say? With all respect, I have walked and walked the streets of this city and all I found were angry stares— people afraid to say or do anything to help another."

"The war took a great toll."

"In the country I call my home, I was hunted like a rabbit. I slept in the forest for months. Couldn't dare cross a road in a village for fear of being reported. And you say there are people here willing to help me? Last evening I walked empty streets to find you. I stopped a person on a bicycle to get direction to your synagogue. When she looked at me, all I could see was fear." His voice began to hammer at him. "Ah, forgive me. I mean no disrespect."

The rabbi turned to his desk and jotted several lines. "Take this address to the British embassy. Britain has responsibility for securing the state of Israel. Talk to this man—Mr. Crittenden. He has helped others I have referred. Listen carefully to what he has to say.''

He fell silent and studied Ethan's face. "But I would ask you to settle yourself here. Take a moment. Sit for some time in silence. Pray for guidance. "

Ethan welcomed the peace of the place but could not separate himself from the choices that lay before him. It also confirmed what he already sensed: the ability to pray had deserted him. It had once been his custom to pray and read scripture on many afternoons. But he hadn't seen a prayer book in months. It came as no surprise that he was unable to force a psalm from his lips. He couldn't precisely recall when the attitude had left him. Had it been a month, three months? He had left it to Irina to lead the Kaddish for Teo and Sandu. It might have been some consolation to know why the power had deserted him. But here again there was emptiness. There seemed no way to bridge the gulf between himself and God. Emptiness hung over him. He stood and tried again to concentrate. What had once come so naturally was snuffed out. All that came to his awareness was the soft shuffle of the rabbi's slippers. The truth of the matter was that the thought of talking to God agitated him. It didn't yield the solace or peace he sought. Instead, it seemed to express itself in his hands—both of which were now coiled fists.

He rose and searched until he found the rabbi in a small anteroom that evidently served as the library.

"Rabbi, my sister rests in the hospital with her arms suspended in cables. I planned on leaving tomorrow to find the man who assaulted her. Now with liberation, she wants me to abandon this thought, forget this man—and return to the way we were. But I remember the words my father taught me—we are a just people, _a just people_ —and if I return with her I know that deep in my bones I will have to live with injustice, that bad things took place and no one was ever called to account for them. If we are a just people then we seek justice, yes?"

The rabbi cut the glow of his paraffin reading lamp and the two figures fell into soft relief in front of it. They spoke until late in the evening.

Ethan returned to Ulrichstrasse as a man on fire.

* *

The British embassy stood behind two imposing stone columns on _Kaiserstrasse_ only two blocks from the French compound. There he waited for an appointment with Mr. Crittenden and eventually received confirmation of the Palestine immigration program.

"There are certain restrictions," the visa officer said in German. Ethan couldn't know where Mr. Crittenden stood in the embassy hierarchy, but his manner left little doubt that he saw himself as singularly important, perhaps indispensable to visa operations.

He pressed the edges of the visa form as if it was an object of some veneration. He delicately picked up a fountain pen and began his notations. He made no eye contact with Ethan. The ritual appeared to be one that could take place whether Ethan was present or not.

"Do you have a trade, Herr Itzkvitz?"

How he hated the harshness of the German tongue. "Itz-KA-vitz. With an 'a'. My name is Ethan. I am a student of the Talmud."

"Doubtful that will pay your passage. How about more specialized skills that might help your application?"

"Specialized?" What is this word? Yiddish is my tongue. Understanding German is a struggle for me."

Crittenden removed his thick spectacles and began inspecting it for dust particles. "Just tell me what you can make or produce, your skills, that's what I need to know."

"Before the war my family ran a small farm. Some livestock and grain. My brother did most of the work. I helped. I would make a good farmer. I'm not afraid to dirty my hands."

"So?"

"Excuse me? How much do you expect a person of my age to offer?"

"That's for me to decide." Crittenden spotted a blemish on his desk and fumbled for his handkerchief. "Who sent you over here anyway?" he asked without looking up.

"Rabbi Frankel from the Stadttempel."

"I could've guessed. The rabbi, he's a noble man, but he's gotten into the habit of sending every DP who claims to be Jewish over to my desk. It just won't do. I'll have to have a word with him." Crittenden took to his desktop with renewed vigor.

Ethan stood. "I can find my way out."

"Any means to pay your transit to Palestine?" Crittenden called. "Entry visas aren't difficult to obtain but the new government requires immigrants to pay the cost of passage."

Ethan questioned if the man was listening. "Maybe you don't understand. I have no money. "

Mr. Crittenden's jowls slid behind the brass reading glasses. "Are you in good health?" he asked without looking up. "And Ethan, sit down for goodness sake."

"I haven't slept under a roof in months."

"There are a number of public works projects now going on. Roads, bridges, electrical grids for what one day will be the state of Israel. The seaport at Haifa is set to double in size. Another alternative would be the Israeli Self-Defense Forces the SDF. Israel will soon be a sovereign state in a troubled region. They are accepting recruits in all branches of defense. This is not a course of action I would recommend. The Jews have formed a good many guerilla groups, and they are deadly. The Arabs? They're arming as well. At the same time we're increasing our soldiers in Palestine to enforce the Mandate. The SDF forces will be right in the thick or it."

Ethan pondered the choices for a moment. "Are they all volunteers?

"Yes. All Jews, returning to establish the homeland if the balance of power tips their way."

"And they will be military? Combat men?"

"I'm afraid it's come to that. Diplomacy has done little and time is short."

Ethan paused. "Now that I think about it, I've never seen the ocean. My country is surrounded by mountains and other countries with their mountains. I suppose the land reaches the water somewhere."

"I can assure you it does. Israel borders the Mediterranean Sea."

"So a Navy is being formed as well?"

Crittenden nodded. He swung around in his chairs and pointed to a wall map. "All these sea approaches to Israel must be protected. Is that mission something that would interest you?"

"I like your description of it."

"Yes, they are staffing the Navy as well, but on a smaller scale. Bear in mind that those billets are just as dangerous as those with the ground forces."

"Can I get a sea assignment?"

"I can't speak to that. You'll have to qualify first. You're young, in good health. Do you have other choices you're looking at?"

No—but I'll talk with the Navy. What about no money for passage?"

Crittenden seemed to enjoy the discourse. "My understanding is that all those qualified will have their ocean passage paid by the new government. In return you'll owe the government three years of your future, provided of course that the _Haganah_ doesn't get you first."

Ethan moved swiftly. Within 48 hours, he had reported to the military liaison section of the embassy and passed a perfunctory physical screening and criminal records check. The following day he signed his contract with the Defence Forces before a portrait of King George VI. Yes, he said, naval service would be his choice and he was prepared to report at once. Because of his age, his recruiting officer asked if his parents would be willing to consent to his enlistment.

"My parents were lost in the camps."

The officer expressed his condolences, then encouraged him to gain weight. "It shouldn't be a problem for you, young man. We eat well on our ships."

* *

On a Wednesday evening when the fog insisted it wouldn't lift, he visited with Irina and told her of his plans.

"This scheme you describe is not like you. It's not the Ethan I remember from the days before the camp." Her body lay rigid in the hospital bed.

"It's true. Everything has changed."

You are such a golem...

Irina eyed him with the same fierce determination he had seen in her eyes on the day she sprang over the crossbar. "We can't return because you're determined to leave our country and somehow find the man who violated me. And in the second breath, you tell me that you have just joined the Israeli Navy. You say all these things are planned on my account. Ethan, there's no need for vengeance on my behalf. If you love us, remain with us." Her hands were free of the cable arrestors and she raised them to the degree she could in a gesture of silence. "Come over to me."

Ethan sat next to her and she moved to embrace him. She could not close her arms around him. Her left arm recoiled in a spike of pain. She sobbed only briefly and held him in a gesture of affection, to which he felt no entitlement.

* *

_HMS Steadfast_ was one of five aging cruisers the British authorities had made available to the Israeli Defense Ministry. Seaman Apprentice Itzkavitz made his way up the boarding ladder with all that he owned in a single sea bag. Families were drawn up to the barrier at the quay. As the ship drew away from the port of Trieste, he followed the path of a gull as it swooped low over the ship's wake. The tugs dropped away to stern and a moment later the bow swung southeast. Off to starboard lay the boot of Italy, limned by a gray powder of light fog. The ship soon gathered headway and the outline of the harbor dissolved into the horizon.

Once they turned and faced the east wind of the Mediterranean, Ethan spend as much time on the bridge as possible, questioning the watch officer as he stood before a spotless brass binnacle. When dusk fell each evening, he sequestered himself off to the side of the navigator's bench and watched the helmsman at work, bathed in the red glow of the nighttime running lights. Later that week, after losing his lunch over the rail, he grasped the leading edge of the chart table as the ship labored through heavy seas. The navigator's rule brought them north of Crete, around the southern edge of Cyprus, and on to their final destination: the port of Haifa. Ethan watched the miles tick away on the broad chart. A thin pencil line in the Aegean Sea denoted the position of the ship at any hour of the day or night. Every twelve hours the shift would change and another petty officer would take charge.

* *

Noon. Eight hours from port. His watch on the bridge as junior deck seaman. He preferred this place in the watch rotation. It carried with it a certain degree of prestige, a subtle indication of status as only the tradition-laden Royal Navy could confer it. Only a few from his pool of recruits were selected for bridge duties.

In fulfilling its mandate, the Royal Navy had reproduced a miniature version of itself along the sprawling waterfront of Haifa. Ethan was told by one of his well traveled bunk mates that their naval installation in Palestine was surprisingly accurate, extending to the signal red of the public telephone booths and the regulation Union Jack which flew above the headquarters building on duty days. A vacant supply room had been converted into a pub, complete with a selection of draught bitter. A placard over the small entrance—"Guiness Is Good For You"—greeted each thirsty sailor.

Ethan lifted his binoculars for a moment. Had that object been a red running light closing on their course? He adjusted the focus of the glasses to the precise distance. Nothing. He let his thoughts drift. Irina. Were her hands now free of the plaster and dressings? Had she made the journey home to Tolnici? And Dora—what of her? Had she located Cyprian? Woul d he see him again?

Behind the ship a flight of gulls followed the wake of the propellers. A sharp wind had picked up on the starboard quarter and the birds instinctively banked to compensate for it. Occasionally a lone bird would sweep down to the surface of the water searching for food. Ethan watched as the gull skimmed the surface, deftly avoiding the spume from a rogue wave.

Now that they were homeward bound on the final leg of their training cruise, he would write and tell Dora and Irina of his new life. He would tell them that he had had a bloody good run of it, all in the best British vernacular he could muster.

He admired the English. Hot meals each evening, whether ashore or at sea. Crisp white uniforms with knife edged pleats. Stacks of vinyl records for language instruction. Books, newspapers, writing instruments everywhere; a physical fitness regimen which had added considerable bulk and strength to a body that had nearly been broken.

Further, he harbored no regrets. Despite the difficulties with language, he had finished in the top tier of his class. Graduation was five days away. The training officer for his squad—a squat Yorkshire man with pink jowls and a north country accent that bordered on unintelligible—had told Ethan that he was going to recommend him for navigator's school. On board the _Steadfast_ , Warrant Officer Shawditch told him, he was to make use of the sextant and learn to respect it for the delicacy and accuracy it brought to making one's way on a featureless sea. Night sights were especially challenging, wedded as they were to identifying a distant constellation and calculating its angular distance to the position of the ship. Just before dawn split the horizon, Ethan located Jupiter and brought its fuzzy orb down to the lip of the horizon. A time check at that moment and then the intricacies of the Royal Navy tome, _Celestial Navigation: Tables and Declinations._

Twilight. _Steadfast_ rounded the first channel marker buoy and began its transit through the commercial shipping channel. Radio traffic picked up as the regular crew of the ship assumed responsibility for the final leg into the navy yard. The radioman handed Ethan the printed text of a message from base. He was to report to Mr. Shawditch once the ship was secured.

A change in the sound of the hull speed. Ethan lifted his head from the narrow bunk and squinted through the porthole. The bosun had throttled back and they were now flat in the water, making their way through the cross stitch of gantries and fueling platforms that formed the outer lip of Haifa harbor. Ethan had slept solidly for more than five hours, a rarity while underway. He had spent the previous night on the bridge, determined to get two accurate navigational fixes. Several rain squalls and heavy cloud cover had conspired against him for most of the evening but by dawn he had been alert enough to snatch two sextant shots before the skies soured. Both were within 100 meters of _Steadfast´s_ actual position.

Warrant Officer Shawditch held the most senior warrant officer grade on the Haifa installation. He was addressed as "Chief" by supervisor and subordinate alike. His compact office was finished in a soft patina pattern, not unlike the intricate cabinetry found in senior officer's quarters on Navy vessels. One wall (or bulkhead as the Chief referred to it) carried the history of his service in the North Atlantic, India, Africa and the Middle East.

As Ethan took his seat, he saw his personnel folder open on the Chief's desk. "Ethan, you've done well, lad, and I trust you made good use of the time with the sextant." Ethan nodded, still not certain of the purpose or direction of the appointment. To be called for a private conference with the Training Director was most unusual. He kept his hands flat on his thighs and sat motionless. He volunteered nothing, nor did he wish to show any indication of tension. Shawditch and his petty officers were always attentive to signs of stress. A pattern of not dealing well with unexpected demands could well remove one from sea duty. And without prolonged service at sea, Ethan knew he would remain an ordinary seaman and lose control over his plan to follow the colors of the Foreign Legion. How he planned to don the white _kepi_ of the Foreign Legion, as Stanescu had done, was his secret. Beyond that concern, he had promised himself as he stood beneath the portrait of King George eight weeks earlier, that no one was going to strip him of his right to make choices. _I am a free man._

Shawditch shifted in his chair. He adjusted the brass belt plate that covered his generous paunch. "Bit of a change in plans, I'm afraid. Not your fault, Itzkavitz, but there's no way round it. You've been at sea for weeks so the details of this disturbance may not have reached you. Simple truth is we've being besieged by refugee boats. The gates to Israel are opening to them. But at the moment, we've got a renegade vessel loaded with Jewish DPs from Yugoslavia. Our chaps intercepted them as they were making a run for Haifa. The passengers have been quarantined and the boat seized. We have reports of other vessels in route. One is said to be leaving Yugoslavia with more than four thousand refugees aboard. No ship that can safely house that many passengers. It's madness. Another is loading in Marseilles. It's the _Exodus_ , filled to the gunnels with camp survivors."

Shawditch almost seemed apologetic. "All this has left us shorthanded. You're my prime candidate for navi school but it can't happen until we get this refugee situation under control. We're going to have to hold you back. Sorry, but I need every man. I realize these are your people, Ethan, but maritime law is what rules here. We're in a tight spot. Do we turn them away knowing what the world knows? That many of them are concentration camp survivors? Or do we tow them into port and then process them for deportation? Not your problem, of course, but I hope it eases your disappointment."

Ethan shook his head. He had no abiding sense of remorse for the enormous bubble of refugees attempting to reach Palestine. He had survived. They would as well. Not enough time to compensate for the crippling war years, but a Jewish homeland was drawing closer. Everywhere the talk was of Palestine. And what did it matter? His goal lay well beyond the confines of the IDF.

"If I could ask, Chief, what will you have me doing in the meantime?"

"There's plenty of shore-based work here. You're a bright young man. I'll find a junior chief who'll take care of you. How about taking charge of our chart and nav supply for the ships we'll be seizing? A star on your service record and a good prep for your schooling, I should say."

Shawditch stood. The matter was closed.

"If the chief would take an extra moment please." A strategy was rapidly spinning into place in Ethan's mind. "How are our forces going to intercept these refugee ships? I'm curious about how it's going to work."

Shawditch pointed to a large chart adjacent to his desk. "We're going to assemble a picket line of fast cruisers and corvettes to control the immigration. We're not describing it as a blockade. The ship that we seized—the _Sturma_ —is going to be reflagged to the Israeli Territorial Sea Forces."

"Who will handle the radio traffic with these ships?"

Shawditch paused. "To be frank, I don't know that we've even considered that aspect of the operation."

"Chief, I ask you to rethink my posting. I could work in this picket line. I speak Yiddish. I could communicate with the captains and crew. They would welcome a friendly voice in their native tongue. After we get the refugees settled, I could return here to port and get on with the other job you had in mind."

"Let me think about it. Report back here in the morning."

Early the next morning, one of the junior petty officers flagged Ethan at breakfast. "I got the word that you'll be boarding the _Sturma_ for picket duty. Shawditch says you'll be on the first rotation. We should be out for about thirty days.

"Oh...something else." He broke out into a broad smile. "She needs to be refitted with a new diesel traction engine. Afraid the only shipyard capable of doing the refit is Angelmont, just outside Marseille. So we'll lie over for around a week or so until the refit is completed and tested. So Itzkavitz...you'll get to sample some good cognac and maybe a young lady. You okay with such diversions?"

He hooted and returned to his coffee.

* *

Once _Sturma_ was moored in Marseilles, the bosun made it clear that the city snug in the arms of the Mediterranean may just be the garden of carnal delights. He required only that they be present for colours each morning, and that they comport themselves as gentlemen at all times. In the event they found themselves in a circumstance where it became impossible to behave like a gentleman, "wear protection."

Contracting syphilis or clap was considered a lapse of discipline. "Ha!" laughed one of Ethan's bunkmates. "Tell me when the British Navy last gave a Captain's Mast to a man who put his pickle in the wrong jar." He stood before the only mirror in their small cabin, anointing himself with black market cologne.

Ethan grinned. "Donat, you're an absolute animal. You shouldn't prowl these streets without a police escort."

"After sixteen days at sea, nothing's going to hold me back." Since their departure from Trieste, his shipmate had talked incessantly of spending time as a youngster in France. His father had waterfront connections, as he described them, that kept his family in and around the city for two years.

Seated on the edge of his bunk during off watch hours, Donat entertained Ethan and McMillan, a cautious Scot, with his accounts of the bordello life as seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old. Dona's hand swept the night air. "See your way down past the Theodore and you'll find her house. They told me when I was still a boy that a woman lived inside who could do thrilling things to a man for only ten francs.''

"So?" McMillan shrugged. "In every navy port, you hear such stories. Tell me something I don't already know." He winked at Ethan.

Donat rubbed his hands together. "Ah, but this one is different, my friend." He offered his conspirator's smile. "She does it with her hands clasped behind her back. The only instrument she uses is her tongue."

Ethan and McMillan exhaled and sat silently for a moment, pondering the anatomical implications of Donat's description.

* *

Just after midnight, Ethan moved to the cubby adjacent to _Steadfast's_ wheelhouse. The watch changed at midnight. He knew that Hammersmith, the most junior petty officer aboard, would be on duty as officer of the deck. He also knew from his time on the bridge that Hammersmith preferred to work out intricate crosswords and therefore always volunteered for the graveyard shift. From where he sat in the forward cubby, Ethan could see the deck officer's silhouette at the rear of the wheelhouse, engrossed in that day's Mind Bender.

He rolled his dungarees and fatigue shirt into his ditty bag. He pulled on the shirt and trouser set that had seen him through his enlistment in Vienna six months earlier. He kept his deck boots. He found them superior to anything he had ever owned.

Ethan carried no passport. He removed his IDF identification tag and slipped it into his boot. The light in the wheelhouse flickered and fell into darkness. Hammersmith had decided to take his mid-watch nap. He moved to the starboard mooring line and surveyed the deck. Satisfied that no one was about, he allowed himself an extra moment to check that his ditty bag was together. His hands trembled as he checked the compartments. _Get hold of yourself_. First, the loose currency from Dora. He checked the pocket again. Missing. Still where he left it—tucked under his mattress in the crew berth.

Now returning up the companionway ladder, 15 _lei_ in hand, he paused for a moment to check the deck and found Hammersmith's assistant disappearing toward the aft end of the ship. Ethan's ditty bag sat three feet from the companionway step. In his haste to remove the bag, he abruptly slammed the hatch cover to its locked position and the sound seemed to ricochet throughout the forward hull section.

Hammersmith had the floodlights beneath the bridge illuminated in seconds. The loudspeaker chirped for a moment, then came his voice: "You on the deck. Identify yourself."

Ethan attempted to focus on the beam of white light now centered directly on him. "Seaman Itzkavitz, taking the air. Our compartment's stifling. Request permission to remain on deck for another ten minutes."

"Itzkavitz, I know you're an apprentice. But read the ship regs before you decide to wander in the middle of the night. Any movement on deck after 2300 hours requires checking with the watch officer. Permission denied."

Ethan promptly moved under the bridge overhang and waited. Moments later the hiss of the speakers stopped and the deck fell into darkness. He gave himself another few minutes until the ship grew quiet. He exhaled slowly, gathered himself up, pulled his woolen watch cap over his forehead, and quickly slipped down a hawser cable.

Orange globes illuminated the slick cobblestones leading out of the harbor. He walked quickly, careful to remain in the shadows. A light rain announced itself. A sedan with the reflective orange striping of the French Harbor Police worked its way through a column of ocean containers. Its windshield wipers flapped uselessly in the half light as the rain suddenly increased. The vehicle passed Ethan. He stepped behind a concrete column. The car came to a quick stop and reversed direction. He tightened his position behind the column and waited. The patrol car crawled slowly towards him, the driver now focusing his spotlight on each pillar. Ethan stood motionless as the light washed over his position. The police idled on for another few minutes, then turned by a tower of containers and disappeared.

Ahead, the harbor security gate stood in a pool of gritty illumination. A milky light inside the glass booth revealed the head of the attendant. The security barrier sat in the closed position. Ethan reckoned that it was some time after midnight, perhaps time for a shift change. He stood in the shadows and waited. An hour passed before the harbor security patrol car pulled up to the gate. The driver shut down the engine and lights and entered the cubicle.

Other than the security agents, Ethan saw no other activity. He turned and began to survey the security fence. He darted between crane cables and idle forklifts, hoping to find an open gate. Within hours he had circled back to the main gate. The patrol car remained where he had last seen it.

Make a run for it?

He doubled back to the most remote section of the yard and quickly began to calculate his chances. Full daylight would be upon him in less than two hours. Hammersmith may decide to do a bunk check at any time.

Nearby a gasoline engine coughed once and began to hum. He followed the sound and stumbled upon a rubber pipeline snaking away from a cluster of fuel tanks. It led to a barge tied up to the pier. A mesh gate separated the tanks from the barge. It stood open. Ethan moved quickly to the gate, crouched for a moment as he listened for movement, and sprang across the pavement, rank with puddles of diesel fuel.

A pump housing stood behind the aft fueling cage. Ethan wormed his way into it and waited for the barge to depart. It was well underway across the harbor when Ethan realized that the vessel was leaving the lights of Marseille in the distance and heading for a remote section of the harbor complex. He cursed the chill and waited until a solitary deck hand began working the mooring lines on the stern. Eventually the barge began to shoulder itself beside the quay. Overhead two gulls cried out, as if to report a trespasser. He found his footing instantly and sprinted along between the rails of a crane track.

A road sign at the intersection pointed west toward Marseille City—six km. The roadway was already thick with morning traffic. Impossible to walk. He fought off the raw edges of fatigue, and hailed a produce truck.

They made their way to Rue St. Ferrell and passed a silent assembly of store fronts. The small Renault truck twisted through a knot of alleyways and boulevards on its way to the destination Ethan had requested: the Foreign Legion Recruiting Depot. The driver said nothing and inhaled deeply on one _gauloise_ after another.

A stone building with a massive gate came into view. Centered on the gate was a simple notice:

### Bureau d' Engagement

### Legion e trangere

### Section Engages Volontaires

Ethan jumped from the cab of the truck. Before he turned to the gate, the driver called and tossed him a clutch of fat bananas.

He pulled the bell chain and stood back. A brass aperture flicked open instantly. A moment later the gate swung open. Bathed in white light, the sentry stood before him, a young man about the same height as Ethan. His skin was olive colored, his face without expression. Outfitted in an immaculate khaki uniform, blue cummerbund, scarlet epaulettes on his shoulders, the sentry wore the traditional Legion _kepi_ , with matching white gaiters over paratroop boots.

The sentry escorted Ethan into a large common room. Over a floor of uneven tile worn thin by the movement of thousands of men came the sweet odor of unwashed flesh and stale tobacco. A cardboard placard directed recruits from Paris and Lyon to assemble in single file beneath it. At one of the first processing stations, Ethan watched a young man kneeling while a fellow recruit removed lice from with his scalp with a rusty tweezer. _My god, what am I getting myself into_?

From somewhere in the rafters a loud speaker welcomed them to Fort Agrimont and announced that they would spend no more than 48 hours there before moving on to the Legion's primary induction center at Sidi-Bel-Abbes, a fortress located some 85 kilometers inland in Northern Algeria.

Ethan moved discreetly to the head of the line where uniforms were being issued. It was to his advantage to be among the first to be outfitted and ready to board the Legion's motor launch for the transit to North Africa. He glanced at an ancient wall clock. The time was just before 0900 (9 a.m.) The bosun would have completed the head count at morning colours aboard _Steadfast._ His absence would be noted. The ship had at least another two days in dry dock before she would be preparing for the return journey to Haifa. Ethan knew that AWOLs were not uncommon in the fleet, particularly in a port such as Marseilles with all its hedonistic attractions. Desertion, however, was an entirely another matter. It was a court martial offense. What legal distinctions divided the two offenses he didn't know. Initially, his squad mates would be questioned. They would take their time because they would instinctively cover for him. The bosun himself would then begin calling the usual lairs of wayward sailors: local bars, whorehouses, jails and, ultimately, the coroner and police if all else failed.

He estimated he had five days to make good his escape to Algeria. Once he left French soil, he would be free of extradition. He stretched on his cot in the recruit bay. Card games were already underway and curses crossed the room in a bewildering number of languages. Ethan calculated that his chances were perhaps acceptable in escaping a formal navy inquiry.

The recruits were soon put on a _corvee_ detail, one man put to work peeling vegetables, Ethan and an angry-looking Greek assigned to floor mops. They began scrubbing a small windowless room. It reminded Ethan of a stable on a winter morning. A solitary tap protruded from the wall, its drippings caught in a crude stone trough beneath it. Toilets were tile ovals in the cement floor with metal foot stands on each side.

At roll call the following morning, he heard the surnames ring out: Hungarian, British, Rhodesian, German, Greek and Italian enlistees made up the population. Regardless of their nationality, the men learned during the first days of indoctrination that the French Foreign Legion existed to rid France of unwanted foreign émigrés and to provide irregular forces in the necessary service of French colonialism. Algeria was once such theater of operation. Indo-China was becoming another.

The French regular army and the Legion shared resources, and among the most active was the _Deuxieme_ Bureau. The Bureau was responsible for military intelligence and worked closely with Interpol and other police agencies on the screening of Legion recruits. Each man must pass the _Deuxieme._ If the international authorities developed an interest in an individual, it was at the discretion of the Bureau whether to surrender him or not. The Legion had been a traditional asylum since its founding and would normally only release an otherwise qualified individual if Interpol could prove the individual had enlisted, and was being harbored by Legion authorities. If the charge involved felony crime, the Legion would surrender the man. Over the plain pine tables in the mess hall, the talk among the latest intake centered on what questions were being asked by the Bureau during the mandatory interviews. Despite the language differences, Ethan was not alone in wanting to determine the probable line of questioning. Each man carried a secret history. When the Bureau finished each day, the subjects of its interrogations submitted to equally intense questions from their bunkmates.

"A French officer will conduct the interview. If you look clean, he and his German sergeant who acts as translator will question you about ninety minutes or so. If you appear to be hiding something, they'll continue with you the next day."

Next to Ethan sat a Canadian who claimed to have served in the Queen's Household Cavalry. Why he joined the Legion was unknown. He appeared to delight in the attention surrounding his account of the interrogation.

"They'll start with details of your birth and childhood and then move to whatever details they can glean from police records. If there are outstanding warrants for you, they'll know it." Ethan listened intently, already beginning to craft his responses.

Another volunteer: "They asked me if I'd ever screwed another man or an animal."

"Did you tell the truth, or say no?"the Canadian asked amid a burst of laughter.

A ham-fisted German at the end of the table: "Be ready to tell them why you want to join. They'll ask you if you want to reconsider." He wiped a layer of tomato soup from his upper lip and reached for a cigarette behind his ear. "Not me. I'm ready for Algeria."

Ethan thought of his alternatives in the event the questioning did not go in his favor. There were none. Besides, Stanescu slipped through the Bureau. Could he not be equally cunning?

* *

On the afternoon of his acceptance _entretien,_ Ethan sat for the noon meal. His mess mate caught his attention and pointed to Canonna, a Corsican whose right cheekbone bore a bruise as dark and ruinous as an ancient stigmata. The young man refused to offer an explanation, but word soon surfaced that he had stabbed and killed a business associate in an alleyway, fled to the Legion, and lied about the event to Captain Cajon, the Bureau officer in charge. Cajon left the room in a fit of outrage. His German translator was instructed to complete the questioning of Mr. Canonna. Rumor in the recruit bay had it that Canonna was wanted by the Italian army for desertion. Later it was learned that Mr. Canonna's departure for Algeria would be delayed by several weeks, owing to severe bruises to his jaw and throat.

When Ethan's interview opened, Captain Cajon was indifferent and attached no special importance to another recruit from Romania. He glanced at Ethan's papers and saw nothing amiss. The day was the final round of questions and both interrogators appeared fatigued. The evening before the interview Ethan had drafted a list of questions he reasoned would be presented to him. He found he did not err by much in his preparation. The questions came at a rapid rate from both men: Was he dominant or submissive as a child? Did he believe that the Jewish people were the chosen ones? Were all Jewish boys circumcised? Had he ever had sex with another man or an animal? Had he ever expressed sympathy for the Iron Guard or any fascist organization? Which family members had survived the camp and where were they now living?

The interpreter drew silent and gestured several times in an attempt to reduce the speed of the questioning. Ethan answered as succinctly as possible. When the question eluded him, he turned to the interpreter and asked for clarification.

The questioning slackened for a moment, and Ethan searched for a familiar French verb in each question, but the pace once again resumed. His interrogators took delight in watching his reactions. At once frustrated and peevish, Ethan turned to the translator.

"Please...your Romanian...my French. Not a good combination, eh?" He directed the translator to ask for a five minute recess. "Make it clear to them I'm not going to fail here. But I don't care to be humiliated. Explain to them or they'll lose a good recruit."

The interview ended shortly thereafter. To the predictable questions at the conclusion, he declared that he wished to join the Legion to close the door on the past and begin life anew as a Legionnaire. He was quick to point out that he would soon master the French language and aspired to become a paratrooper. The sergeant halted for a moment at this admission. Captain Cajon became absorbed in tamping a fresh cigarette on the edge of his desk.

"And what regiment do you aspire to join, Legionnaire Itzkavitz?" Cajon asked.

Ethan forced a smile to dissolve. Here was the question he had carefully prepared for.

"The Second Regiment Etrangers, sir."

"Ah."Captain Gajon inhaled deeply and brushed a trail of ash from the table. "They fight in Indochina in a very different kind of war, thousands of miles away, in a sweltering climate, a different time zone. Why choose to be posted there?"

"It's the very reason I joined."

Ethan allowed a smile. Spontaneous fidelity to the Legion would always disguise tepid answers to the interrogator's questions. Gajon noted Ethan's remarks. Within 48 hours, Ethan knew he would be boarding the Legion's launch for the shores of Algeria. He rose and gave a smart salute to the Captain.

"I haven't dismissed you." The captain continued writing. "Take your seat."

At length, Gajon took up the interview. "We don't see many Jews in our ranks. Listen, France isn't friendly toward your people. Chances are you'll never set foot in France after your service. But we can't be too careful, can we? For myself, I go with live and let live, but I've learned that Jews can't be trusted. Sure, sure, they're honest with their own but with the Gentile, who knows? So answer me this: is there anything you've hidden from us today? Any act in your life you want to keep secret?"

Gajon's translator paused for a drink.

Ethan saw the _Steadfast_ at anchor, silent and bathed in orange vapor lights. He heard the rattle of the gangway as he escaped. The quick glance back at the bridge as he darted between cargo pallets. The hatch. The one mishap that nearly ruined his plan. The clanging, the clanging—like a gong that rumbled endlessly through the ship.

Gajon sat waiting for an answer.

"Nothing" Ethan said at length.

Gajon placed his pen on the table. "You paused longer than most. Most men are carrying at least one burden, something they wish to confess. You know—a willful betrayal, a violent episode, maybe a criminal act they've never told anyone. When they admit it to me, it gives them a clean slate. They start their Legion service without a lot of garbage from the past. You should think again. Take your time."

"Haven't us Jews paid for our sins?" Ethan asked.

The captain waited for the translator to settle. "Well, you'll pay for it now with your stumbling French," Gajon added. "I want a straight answer."

Ethan asked for a glass of water. He drew on it slowly, framing his thoughts.

"It was during the war. I failed to protect my family. I was too weak. Too much like my father."

Cajon toyed with a battered cigarette lighter, the Legion coat of arms prominent under his index finger.

"Everywhere I looked I saw soldiers in the streets, dogs running in every direction and screams..." Ethan brushed his forehead in a vain attempt to rid himself of the memory.

"Irina, I said, stay in your room lock the door, and then heavy footsteps came up the stairs and this pretend soldier grabs her and drags her into the street. I'm thrown down the stairs behind her and told to shut up."

"Who were these people?" Gajon asked.

"Fascist soldiers. I was pulled out to the street and saw them form a little circle around this man and Irina. They attacked her again and again. I did exactly as I was told. When it was over, I'm feeling lightheaded, but relieved. I saved my skin, but not without a stab of guilt. It came to me when I remembered the head bashing they gave my brother."

Gajon frowned. "What's this secret you're describing?"

"Don't you see? My sister was raped before my parents' eyes. I failed them all. I could've..."

"Very well." Gajon appeared to have had enough. He clasped his hands and rose from the desk. "You come to us with a clean conscience now." He brushed Ethan's shoulder in a subtle act of pardon.

* *

The final act for the novice legionnaires came the following day when they took their seats in a small amphitheater. The examining physicians and the Bureau had taken their toll; of the 135 men who passed through the gate of Fort Agrimont eight days earlier, 73 now sat waiting for the farewell address from the station sergeant major. Above the lectern hung a banner trimmed in the green and gold colours of the Legion:

LEGIO PATRIA NOSTRA

The Legion is our Country

The sergeant major appeared from a side curtain, immaculate in a khaki shirt and trousers. He wore no decorations except for his silver braided parachutist's wings. His scalp reflected the overhead lights, his hair _boule a zero_ , trimmed precisely to Legion regulation. He towered over the lectern and grasped it as if he planned to hurdle it at some unsuspecting recruit. He stood silently for a moment, waiting for absolute silence. Ethan immediately grasped the essential symmetry of the man: an economy of movement and manner of speech that admitted to nothing bordering on non-essential; an austere elegance extending even to the pale luminous hands on his wrist watch.

"Tomorrow you depart for your tactical training. Look around you. Many who wished to join you on this voyage are no longer here. Many more will be eliminated at Sidi. "Wherever your path may take you, I want to impart to you today things you must never forget about our Legion....we sing! We sing on the parade ground, on the battlefield, at sea, on all our national holidays, at weddings for our comrades in arms, at funerals and at any other fucking time the spirit moves us!" A ripple of polite laughter. Ethan knew the address would not be lost on polite language.

"Every legionnaire should know about _nom-de-guerre._ When you complete your training in Algeria, you will have the option of changing your identity. If you request it, we can create a new name, date of birth and nationality for you. In return, the Legion requires five years of service. After three years, it will be possible for you to preserve your anonymity by requesting another identity. Or you may revert to your original name and nationality. The choice is entirely yours.

"More than once I have answered requests from Interpol on this account. Let us say Jose M. Trican of Madrid is wanted for robbery in that city. I check our records and find that Sergio Trican is now Legionnaire Leon Swertsky. So when Interpol or the local prefecture demands that Jose Trican be released, I rightfully answer sorry, but we have no Mr. Trican on our records." Another punctuation of laughter, coloured this time by nods of gleeful consent.

"Finally, I must tell you of an aspect of Legion life that you should already have noticed. We have a great devotion to tradition. Our songs tell of part of that tradition. Our marching pace—-precisely eighty-five steps to the minute—-is one expression of tradition. As you will come to know, our watchword is-"March or Die!" I will leave it to each man in this room to come to terms with what that phrase may mean to him. Tomorrow, you will take your oath before the hand of Captain Danjou tomorrow. I wish you well and never forget: 'Legio Patria Nostra.' "

At this, every man was on his feet, palms extended under the Legion songbook. Their harmony was fragmented by the mix on tongues, but the rafters of the building shook with the refrain chorus of _Le Boudin._

At daybreak on their final day in France, they stood side by side in a small chapel on the upper battlement level of Fort Agrimont. A narrow altar displayed an exquisite glass reliquary. Each man was called forward to sign his formal enlistment papers before the wooden hand of Captain Danjou. Ethan had read of Captain Danjou, by all accounts the patron saint of the Legion. Danjou had lost his lower arm in an earlier skirmish, but secured his place in history with the defence of a small fortress in Camerone, Mexico in l863. He and 63 legionnaires fought mor than 2000 enemy soldiers before receiving the bayonet themselves. Somehow his wooden hand survived and was retrieved from the site of the massacre.

Ethan stepped forward and studied the hand. Examined closely it appeared a crude appliance, at first glance a reasonable facsimile of a human hand; however, the attached fingers were disproportionate, the knuckles appearing more like the carapace of a hardshell crab. But he was now in the ambit of a strict priesthood, and the hand of Captain Danjou rested on its ornate case as a relic—-a symbol of death, given unconditionally as the Legion expected.

One evening earlier in the week, Ethan happened to share a table in the canteen with the French Army chaplain at the Fort, a lean intense man, his head shaved in the traditional _boule._ Over a pinnard of wine, the chaplain became expansive: "Into the Legion pass men of all types: dishonored officers, freed convicts, anarchists whose hearts still burn, loyalists, and those souls forced to choose between crime, unemployment, suicide or the Legion. So you see, France does these men a great service. One must be strong to endure service in the Legion. And in doing so, men like yourself are allowed to atone for their past and pass to a higher plane of existence." The chaplain drained his cup and excused himself. Ethan found the padre's philosophy a bit pompous, but enjoyed the red wine very much.

* *

Riding the evening tide aboard the Legion motor launch just before sunset, Ethan Itzkavitz, _Matricule_ #63074, watched as the lights of Marseille grew soft in the distance. In all likelihood, not a man aboard the boat would put a boot on French soil—-or anywhere in Europe for that matter—for the next five years. From somewhere in the aft section of the compartment, voices rose in "Adieu vieille Europe."

Adieu vielle Europe, que le diable t'importe

Adieu vieux pays, our le ciel, si brulant,

d'Algerie,

Nous les blesses de toutes les guerres,

Il nous faut du soleil, de l'espace

Pour redorer nos carcasses.

(Goodbye, old Europe, may the devil take you

Goodbye, old country, for the burning sun of Algeria.

We are the wounded from every war, the world's damned

We need sunlight and space, to regild our bodies.)

# [Sidi-Bel-Abbes  
Algeria, North Africa](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

_Appel._ Evening roll call. _Les Bleu_ Itzkavitz and 120 others were en route to Saida training base after a two day sea journey into the port of Oran, Algeria. It had been a transit filled with the relentless pounding of lumpy waves across the bow of their small launch. Late in the afternoon the sun had played off the edges of the chop and the water grew a deeper blue as they moved through it. Now is was gray and menacing. The rolling of the vessel in heavy seas told its own story:the boat's displacement was insufficient for conditions in that narrow tract of water in the western Mediterranean. Ethan wondered at one point during the night—when wind and sea joined in a howling unison— if the vessel might capsize. If he needed any further evidence of the ship's lack of stability, he found it in the latrine adjacent to their quarters. The jammed toilets had left a sheen of yellow fluid over the corrugated deck. Attempting to escape the odor of raw sewage and stomach bile, men stumbled to the top deck only to learn that conditions there were too dangerous. By late afternoon a corporal appeared in the recruit bay and led them topside in calmer conditions. There he commenced a mercifully lengthy set of observations on what would be expected at Sidi-Bel-Abbes, the Vatican City of the Legion:

"If you consider deserting, you will not be alone."

"Do not be ashamed if you are driven from the Legion. It's not for everyone."

"Beware of the marches. 'March or Die' is more than a simple slogan."

* *

Saida stood in a broad treeless savannah. Trim red brick buildings surrounded the parade field where Ethan now completed his fifth circuit. He held a field rifle fully extended above his head as he ran. Fuzzy triangular patterns of sweat had already formed beneath his shoulders and at the base of his neck. Corporal Calvi waited for him as he rounded the cinder oval. An unannounced foot locker inspection earlier in the day had forced his squad to assemble behind the barrack and display their locker contents in accord with Legion _Reglement._ Each item—socks, brass belt buckle, shoulder _fourragere,_ underwear, shaving kit—were to be precisely displayed on a cloth framed with the silhouette of each item. Distance between objects was to be within two millimeters. Corporal Calvi conducted the inspection and found Ethan _en violation_ : one unauthorized pair of shorts.

The shorts were now clenched between his teeth as he labored around the circuit, his shoulders pounding for relief. Each lap brought a fresh reminder from Calvi, sometimes a closed fist that struck with a pinpoint of pain. At other times it would be an open hand. The heat of the impact swam across the entire side of his face. "Pain is weakness leaving the body," Calvi called to him. "Repeat it. Repeat it. I can't hear you."

From the open windows above his squad bay, Ethan heard another NCO at work, doing the rounds of the barracks rooms. As he had done each day without fail, he would perform the cleanliness inspection in the latrines and rooms. A pause, and then the sound of metal lockers being upended. Ethan raised his eyes and saw the first of three pairs of boots sail from the window. If the squad bay did not meet standards, sheets and pillow cases would soon be raining down on the baked surface of the company area.

These actions soon became known as "sweeps," and it was in the aftermath of one of Corporal Calvi's tirades that Ethan returned to his bunk to find a legionnaire kneeling at his locker, fingers at work under the neatly stacked clothing items. Ethan threw himself upon him and instantly had his fingers cupped beneath his throat. He maintained enough pressure on his windpipe so that he could easily turn him face up. The man's eyes rolled to the top of his head as Ethan tightened his grip. Ethan recognized him: Marius. Whether that was his actual surname or his _nome-de-guerre_ no one knew. A scrawny Frenchman always bartering for cigarettes. A man who offered little of himself and expected nothing from others. Marius was simply another face, another silent volunteer for France.

Ethan allowed him to breathe.

"I wasn't planning to steal anything please believe me...it's a razor I need and I know what's going to happen if I don't find one it's urgent that..."

Ethan held up his hand for silence.

Marius caught his breath and began again: "Two days ago they found me without one and I did more circuits than I could count with the carbine then with the field pack. And this all after lights-out. Only thing I could see was the orange glow of Calvi's cigarette. Your bunkmate—Stefan maybe?—he told me you keep two of everything to avoid trouble with the corporals during inspections. For me, no more nights on the parade ground. No more Calvi with his hairy nose in my face." He swallowed. "I need the razor." He held both hands against his face, as if to protect himself from being punched.

Marius exhaled and Ethan caught the odor of rancid breath and cheap tobacco. Black bits of it had accumulated and dried in the corners of his mouth. Ethan seized his chin.

"If you need something, ask for it. Here we help each other. But if you open this locker again, I'll turn you in. You know what the punishment for theft is, eh?"

Marius avoided any further infraction with Ethan but seemingly could not avoid the wrath of Corporal Calvi. Each inspection, every _appel_ gave Calvi another opportunity to unhinge Marius. Ethan watched as Marius' will to resist was gradually dismembered. Nighttime penalty marches and disciplinary duties robbed him of the hours he needed for sleep and food. Standing at attention each evening at the foot of his bunk in olive drab shorts and top, Marius awaited the evening's kit inspection. Ethan stood motionless with eyes locked forward, head at rigid attention. He heard Calvi make his way along the row of bunks. Then came the soft edge of the corporal's voice as he questioned Marius. In an instant the voice mushroomed in volume and his fists became restive.

On a subsequent evening's rifle inspection, Marius lost his will to resist. Predictably, the cleanliness of his carbine failed to meet standard. A blemish on the trigger housing had caught the Corporal's eye. Calvi seized the rifle and cursed Marius. The denunciation continued under the winking of a faulty florescent light until the corporal had vented his anger. He then dropped the rifle at Marius' feet. Calvi turned and exited through a corner stairwell.

An instant later, Marius let out a growl of contempt. He seized the rifle, turned the muzzle toward his chest, and hurled the weapon at the departing figure. It spun over three bunks, splintered the door frame above the stairwell and tumbled to the floor. Marius stood panting and motionless, his fists gathered at his side. Ethan's bunk adjoined the stairwell. He quickly gathered up the rifle and slid it under his bunk. A moment later, Calvi's oval face appeared in the doorway. Ethan stepped forward and announced, "Duty Corporal on deck!" At that, everyone instantly resumed their standing positions at the foot of their bunks.

Calvi eyed Ethan for a moment and his face dissolved into a sneer. He swept the wood splinters with an unblemished boot and examined the fractured door frame.

"What was that sound I heard a moment ago, recruit Itzkavitz?"

"A foolish error on my part, Corporal. I dropped my rifle by accident."

Calvi cocked his head, much the way a serpent would eye its quarry.

"Pardon me. I didn't hear you. What did you say?"

Ethan repeated his statement. No fist gathered up to punish him. Instead, Calvi seemed deeply offended. "I'm confused. Perhaps you can help me see things more clearly. How is it possible you could drop your rifle on an upright door frame?"

Before he could answer, Calvi turned away from him. "A legionnaire never releases his weapon unless instructed to do so." He seemed somewhat bewildered by the turn of events. "In battle if you lose your rifle, you may soon lose your life. See me after morning _appel._ "

* *

The next morning Ethan began four hours of _la pelote_. He was given a pick and shovel at noontime, a time when the sun began to lay thick bands of heat and humidity over every object. He stood in a treeless area. His task would be to dig a grave-like cavity in the unyielding orange earth until he reached the stone underlayment. "Hoist the stones out of the excavation and break them into small pieces." He was then instructed to dig an identical hole parallel to the first.

"No rest breaks, no sitting. I'll be watching" a young corporal told him.

The first task complete, he was directed to remove his helmet, fill it with the broken rock, and shift the rock to the second hole. He was permitted to sit while he constructed a small pyramid of rocks at the base of the grave. Under the rocks he was to place his copy of the Legionnaire's Manual of Arms. Calvi drew up to the edge of the pit and peered down at him. A brownish talcum-like dust covered his boots. Calvi pointed to the pages of the manual and smiled.

"You dropped your rifle. You've violated the manual, so I assume you no longer have use for it." He instructed Ethan to refill both excavations.

Ethan's four hours of _pelote_ had stretched to something more than eight hours. He could only glance at the sun to measure time. For two days thereafter, he struggled to lift his arms high enough to shave.

* *

Calvi handed him the letter without comment. It bore an instant recognition. Irina's careful handwriting, the vowel marks all carefully inserted. A Tolnici postmark; the date nearly one month earlier:

Ethan:

You are difficult to understand. While mother and I don't agree with your decision, we'll do what we can to help you. I'm afraid you leave us small choice.

It has taken me much time to writer this note. My left hand is completely healed but my writer hand is taking much longer. This is the first of anything I write since the war!

Today I am not feeling so good about our separation. Mother and I are doing are best here, but it is difficult without you. We return to find our land tenants living in our house. All of our livestock gone. The goods in the shop Mother checked first thing. Nothing left.

But these are small matters. We are here to rebuild. Many are not here. I think you will find our little village will never be the same. Remember the Levitz family? Lost on the march. Their home still sits vacant. And the Stachman family? The same fate. We have lost children, parents, grandparents, our school teachers....so many lost.

Cyprian is here working on what is left of their farm. It is just him and his mother now.

I have written the government on locating Sandu's remains. We dearly wish to find Teo as well and bring him home. If will take much time to find the answers, if we ever hear anything!!

Oh, you will be happy to know that Ana is healing. She doesn't talk much but we understand.

More tomorrow.

Well here I am again and I think I should tell you the truth about us here. The house is a shell. The new government promised some kind of refugee allowance but it was all lies, lies. I've ended up the strong one, but how much longer can I last?

Give up this pursuit of yours. Come home.

Irina

* *

The bright orange disk rose swiftly. Marius and Ethan were stripped to the waist, working in a target pit at the firing range just after sunup. As in everything else, the Legion observed a rigid protocol. Both men labored in an area surrounded by a berm of sand bags. They were not permitted to remove their helmets. Ethan lowered the targets after each series of firing. Marius marked the paper targets with coloured darts to denote where the bullets had struck the target. At a signal from the safety flags, both men would take up tension on the ropes that supported the oak frames and the targets would ascend. Bullets ripped almost silently through the overhead target, but occasionally an errant shot would strike their berm with a sharp crack. A sand bag would inflate momentarily and then seem to sigh as it absorbed the impact. The repetition continued throughout the day. The only variant was the heat which rose to unspeakable intensity by mid-afternoon. As the distant riflemen worked their way through the firing tables, Marius told his story.

Most men who joined the Legion during this time were on the run: escaping from allied armies now flush with victory, some from Axis army units where they had seen too much defeat and barbarism; others from wives, lovers, and creditors who sought redress for real and imagined sins. Marius (yes, he confided to Ethan it was a pseudonym for his Legion service) claimed to have made a handsome living as a diamond smuggler.

He offered Ethan a cigarette. "I worked as a courier for the route between LeHavre and Brussels. Heh, you know these places? I was a mule, someone who carries raw stones from the wholesaler to the buyers in Belgium. Lots of secrecy so that no one knew the exact path of the stones. I could never trust no one. I looked at hands, I looked at eyes, I watched certain movements. After a time, someone informed on me. It could have been a driver, another mule, or my wife. How would I know? My pay was very very good. But the risks were great. Stone after stone, year after year, and the tension began to break my body. Look at me. I smoke two packs a day to hold my nerves together. If I'd known the Legion was even worse, I would never have joined."

Marius smiled. "Still,where else can a French citizen live outside French law, take a new identity, and eventually retire in France without fear of the law? I think I'll stick with it if I can survive Saida. And I believe I will survive this place because of you, my friend. You took my punishment. In my life I have never known such an act. And here I sit under this punctured target with no means to thank or repay you."

"Your friendship is enough" Ethan said.

* *

Another day of torpor passed on the range before Marius became specific about why he sought the anonymity of Legion service. "In the trade a mule may have a short life. The French customs authorities are a constant threat. I took it upon myself to provide for my retirement by taking certain liberties with the shipping manifests and gradually building an inventory of smaller stones. How I did this without detection for some length of time is something I won't describe to anyone. The gems now sit in a safe box in a Brussels bank. I have a natural gift for forgery and it took some time for me to be found out. Why should they care? The trade in precious stones is as lucrative as heroin. The profits are more than any one man is entitled to."

A whistle sounded and the firing ceased. They dropped their target and waited for the mess truck to bring the afternoon meal. Marius drew a fresh cigarette and continued. "So, I became bolder in my deception. I became as filled with greed as some of the bosses in Belgium with their premium cognac and hand-wrapped Cuban cigars.

"It wasn't long before they got wise. I knew I would never know my killer. It could be anyone, at anytime—in the local shop, in the rear seat of my car, at my bedroom window in the middle of the night." He sighed. "So I'm here and three small velvet pouches in Brussels hold my only assets for this life. As to the _organisation_ , they continue to search for me, of that I have no doubt."

As the cloudless days passed, Ethan and Marius became aware of the degree to which they depended on each other. A silent covenant had emerged. It was not unusual when Marius turned to Ethan one afternoon and complained of a wound to his arm. A rusty blade of wire had slashed his forearm. Ethan urged him to head for the dispensary, but they both knew the visit would have to wait.

The long afternoon brought with it an unforgiving heat. Still the firing went on. During these hours, Ethan described the war years in Romania, how his family had been fractured by pogroms, Irina's rape. "We're both fugitives," Ethan said. "You're a hunted man and the Legion has given you refuge. I'm hunting a man and the Legion has offered him refuge as well." He laughed. "The chaplain at Agrimont suggested that we should be grateful to the Legion for such gifts. I'm not so sure."

"One thing the Chaplain won't tell you is what I've learned," Marius said. "You're a young man, still innocent in some ways, so listen to what I say. When you become a hunter, you're never satisfied until you corner your quarry. Those bastards in Brussels have searched for me for more than a year. I had to move my family to the mountains to avoid trouble with them. My wife she lives on an unmarked road, no telephone, no mail. A week before I enlisted, we were in bed when we heard a car move slowly past the house. Then it turned, made a second pass, stopped for a minute or two and then moved on. Ethan, I tell you she clung to me like a frightened child." Marius put his shoulder under the target frame and lifted. "Yeah, the hunt is its own reward. Remember that. From that night on, we lived in fear. You should let the same fear stalk this Romanian brute. Don't let him think for a minute you've given up."

Ethan gave him a questioning glance. "How can he know anyone is searching for him?

Marius pressed a damp towel to his wound. "It's the not knowing that will undo him."

* *

The afternoon stand-down came later than usual. Word came down the line that a truck had broken down. The lowered target acted as a perfect sun shade. They rested and shared a canteen of water. "Here's my problem," Ethan said. "I've heard Stanescu is in Indochina, but God knows what name he's using."

Marius nodded in agreement.

"His regiment is spread over 300 kilometers around Hanoi. Where to begin eh? It makes my head hurt. Calvi's seen hundreds of _les bleus_ pass through here. You think he might know something about him?"

"Calvi's a bastard. Trust him for nothing except a mouthful of knuckles." Marius spat into the target pit. "Let me see what I can find out."

* *

That evening Marius requested permission to visit the infirmary, using the saturated towel as evidence. The gash had cut deeper into the tissue than the medic initially suspected, and Marius was left to while away his time between applications of antiseptic and stitching.

"What news? Ethan asked after he returned.

"Not as much as I'd hoped. But I say one thing about this medic—- he likes women. He has a file cabinet stacked with French nudie magazines. " He smiled and turned to Ethan. "But listen, there may be a way for you. He has years of medical records sitting there. I'm thinking that Stanescu came through here right? Maybe a year or two ago?" Ethan rolled to an upright position in his bunk. "I suppose so."

"Okay, okay. Now listen. I invent some reason to go back to him for treatment, maybe complain about the stitches being too snug or something. Then somehow—now don't ask me how because I don't know—but somehow I get the chance to look at those records. Your man Stanescu should be in there somewhere, and get this, he should have a copy of his assignment order in there as well. I know it's required. Look in your own record if you don't believe me."

Ethan finished the thought. "And then the order would tell us his unit, _mais,_ eh?"

"I think you mean _justement_. But no matter. I rest my case."

"But how can you go back to him?" Ethan asked. "Calvi won't permit it. You know that. He couldn't care about your stitches. He'll accuse you of shamming and you'll be off to a day's worth of _pelote_."

"Then I have this question for you my friend." Marius slipped into his bunk. "Do you want to find this Stanescu? _Oui or non_?"

Ethan laughed. "Now you speak French I can understand. Don't give up on me just yet. We'll talk in the morning."

* *

Sunday mornings brought a pause in the routine and Ethan waited until his squad bay had cleared. He motioned to Marius. From under his pillow he withdrew his bayonet, a nine inch blade that he had honed to a fine edge.

"Point one: you can't return to the infirmary. Out of the question. I'll be the one."

Marius laughed. " _You'll_ be the one? I would like to know how. You've no reason to see the medic, you've no injury. You think for a moment Graf won't report you? Then Calvi will be cracking your skull and—-"

"That's where this fits in" Ethan said.

Marius stared at the bayonet. Ethan waited.

"What bullshit. What you gonna do? Stab yourself with your own bayonet?"

"No. You're going to do it for me" Ethan said.

"Wh _aaa_ t?"

"Watch." Ethan knelt and extended his palm on the bed frame. He held the bayonet 30 inches above it. He released the bayonet and snatched his hand away. The knife struck the frame with a soft concussion and quivered for a moment in the wood.

"The puncture wound from that blade should get some attention, all right," Ethan said. "I won't even have to get permission from Calvi. The medic will have to treat me. Here—you try it. Hold it at this level and release it. Its weight will do the rest."

Marius hoisted the bayonet. He looked at Ethan. "No hands please."

"Higher. Yeah, that's about right. Now hold that position." Ethan opened the palm of his left hand and aligned it under the knife.

Marius sat immobile.

"Well? Let go of it."

Marius pushed the bayonet aside. "It makes no sense. Then two of us are going to be injured. I can see it now, oh yeah, Calvi finds both of us bandaged and puts it all together. We're both shamming while the others pull their weight. Then we'll both be on his shit list."

Ethan muttered in frustration. "Not this? Then what? I'd say we're about out of choices."

Marius face brightened. "One more, my friend. One more. Here—hand me the knife."

He positioned the tip of the blade next to the first suture on his left arm and sank it into the tissue. The catgut gave way instantly. He inhaled deeply and set to work on two other stitches. He squeezed the incision until fresh blood began to ooze over it.

He rose, a look of triumph on his face, now drenched in sweat. "Okay, I'll be the one to go to Graf. It's Sunday. No one will be manning the clinic. I'll have to send the orderly to find him. He'll be forever getting in to see me. I'll put a compress on the wound and wait for him. And while I'm waiting, I'll to a little file reading to keep my mind off my terrible injury." On his way down the stairwell, he laughed and called back to Ethan. "Hey, don't let it be said that Marius doesn't know how to return a favor."

* *

Marius appeared jubilant the next day. Seated on the unyielding wooden seats of a Renault Army truck as they returned to the firing range, he flashed a thumbs-up to Ethan.

Ethan dozed under the canvas cover. It fluttered under a dry wind as the truck changed gears and accelerated. Marius pounded his knee. "Your man—his name was Ion Stanescu when you knew him during the war?"

"Maybe." Ethan opened his canteen and splashed warm water on his face. "I never knew his given name."

Ethan attempted to grasp what Marius was offering but somehow his senses seemed momentarily insensate. He saw Marius' lips moved in an uneasy synchronization with his words. "But how could you know...." He struggled for a moment and then allowed his voice to trail off. He gestured at the blank desert rolling by. A moment later his mind cleared and he knew the answer: Marius had obviously orchestrated a deal, as he would call it, and the details of it provoked in him a gleeful satisfaction.

"Listen, I had only ten francs in my pocket" Marius said over the roar of the diesel. "But I managed to make a deal with Graf." He slapped his thigh in laughter. "See, he's a Frenchman like me. I asked him if he has known many Romanians who spent time here. He told me he can recall at least three who saw him for treatment. All this time he's painting iodine on my wound. I say how complete his medical care is and he smiles and keeps rolling out the cotton balls. Suddenly he has all the time in the world. "Anyway, he knew his patients only by their _matricule_ numbers. So it became necessary to search his medical records. That information, of course, he's not supposed to give to anyone. Dead end."

Marius's glum face was obviously part of the act, but Ethan played along. "Come on, what happened? Tell me."

"Ha! So I change the subject. I talk about my younger sisters in LeHarve. Few things interest a lonely legionnaire more than the availability of young females. Graf immediately wanted the addresses of my sisters. Then I knew that the hook was set. I told him my older sister preferred French men as lovers. I'm a barterer. No surprise in that eh? I offered her name and address and a promise to recommend him in exchange for the particulars on the Romanian legionnaires. I could see his fingers were too much itchy for a fresh female. It didn't take him long to agree. I scanned the files and learned that one legionnaire was forty-three years old. Eliminate him, eh? Two others were in the right age group: one from Moldavia region and one from Timosora."

"Moldavia," Ethan said. "Is there a photograph in the file?"

"No, but listen, there is more." Marius seized his shoulder and pulled him closer. "The notes say that two _bleus_ were admitted after a fight in the barracks. The one from Moldavia was cut in the hand by some kid. In return, our legionnaire in question dropped him with one punch and then nearly strangled him. The boy's windpipe was badly bruised."

"So the one from Moldavia is..."

"Not so quick, _mon amie,_ let me finish. Your man is now _nome de_ _guerre_ Lance Corporal Devereux, serving in Indochina with the Fourth Regiment between Bac-Ninh and the Seven Pagodas."

"You're a criminal like the rest of them." Ethan laughed. "And I love you for it."

* *

The barracks fell silent after lights out. Ethan and Marius shared a flask of cognac Marius had somehow concealed. Marius took a long pull on the silver container and whispered to Ethan. "I'm very happy tonight." He turned to Ethan's bunk. "And you—happy as well?"

"More like astonished that you were able to read those files," Ethan said.

"I helped you in a way only soldiers could understand. I'm pleased that we'll be finishing here next week and on our way to our units. I won't want to be here when Graf comes looking for me. And if Graf confides in Calvi, I'll see many days of _pelote."_ Marius lifted his haunches and let a soft fart escape.

"Maybe he'll just want to see pictures of the girl," Ethan said.

"That's impossible. I have no sisters."

* *

Captain Noland commanded their company, but they saw little of him. Ethan noticed him on only one occasion, standing in a small pool of shade, fingers interlocked in a spotless leather pistol belt. An impressive figure, but elusive to the eyes of a young legionnaire. It was said that he was a graduate of St. Cyr, the French military academy. At an otherwise routine morning formation, a week before unit assignments were to be given out, Noland appear on the edge of the parade ground. He paused for a moment, then effortlessly sprinted to the head of the company. He indicated to the _sergent_ in charge that he wished to address the company. He took up his position before them, mannequin-like in composure, a leather bound swagger-stick under his left arm. The men came to attention in an instant.

"You're learning what it is to be a legionnaire. The man who enlists in the Legion can be said to have a military vocation. Too often that vocation is mixed with greed or deceit or a measure of slothfulness. A broad catalogue of human weakness exists, and the Legion must purge these vices. To be found fit to fight with the Legion, to wear the white _kepi_ , you must be cast like an ingot of precious metal. All contaminants must be eliminated.

"Now, I've observed your training. I've reviewed your individual induction records"—here a snap of the wrist as his stick beat a brief cadence on his trouser leg—"and I can tell you that this company is not fit to call itself a Legion company. Take heed to what I say. Time is short."

He glanced at the ground and cut a small arc in the gravel with his cavalry boot. Ethan thought the mannerisms bordered on the theatrical, but there was no questioning the granite composure of the captain.

"So to clear my mind and determine if and when you will become legionnaires, we will conduct a forced march tonight. We push off at 2000 hours. We head west. Everyone must maintain the pace. If you drop out of the column of march, you'll be left behind. There is simply no other way to insure that only the fittest will qualify to wear the Kepi."

Another pause, precisely timed to draw the tension.

"Our distance will be fifty kilometers, a heroic distance for many armies. But you may soon be Legionnaires, no longer _les bleus._ Take pride that you'll soon be purified and elevated into the proud traditions of the Legion." Noland turned, saluted the colors, and took his leave.

The company remained at silent attention on the parade ground, now beginning to turn a ripe tobacco hue in the morning sunlight. No one was prepared to undertake a 35 mile road march across terrain as desolate as the moon. But it had now become their rite of cleansing. The high priest had spoken.

* *

Ethan immediately recognized that his path to Indochina and the 4th Regiment _Etrangeres de Parachutistes_ would thread through the desert that night. He prepared diligently, packing as much fresh water and dry footwear as possible in his field pack. He gathered up his last three months of pay packets and lodged them in his helmet liner. No need to guard his foot locker on the night of the march, he reminded himself. At the end of the squad bay, Marius circled his bunk, seized by a sense of outrage that seemed to expand with each outburst. "Purification! What claptrap! Utter horseshit! Calvi, Noland...the lot of them. They glory in pain and death. This place reminds me of a monastery for those who enjoy bleeding and pain."

His bunkmates went silently about their preparations. No one responded to Marius. Ethan glanced at the row of steel bed frames, slim mattresses now coiled in regulation width. The soldiers went about their preparations in the tenacious silence of those who instinctively know that they are only hours away from a defining event. And once again, Ethan was reminded, the subjects of the fear were denied the opportunity to fully prepare themselves for a moment that could end in death.

* *

A moonless night on a surface with a veil so black that only the harsh breath of the man in front of you provided any sense of direction. Drop out of the line of march and the night would swallow you. Ethan heard once again the footsteps of the Tolnici families as they set off on the march to Dumanovka. He shook the image from his mind. He would place himself beside Marius in the column. He would contain him. His kind of talk only nourished the core of fear that seemed to be seeping into each man's consciousness. Ethan had begun to understand the wages of fear on the march to Dumanovka. Would they revisit him once he left Saida behind?

The company numbered 250 men. The regulation march pace at night was four to five kilometers per hour. At that pace, at least ten hours would be required to complete the distance. Rest stops would add another hour.

Despite the vitriol, Ethan saw the wisdom in what Marius had proclaimed to any willing listener. There _was_ a blend of masochism to the entire undertaking. How else to explain a path across the trackless sand that intersected with nothing, that turned back on itself at 25 kilometers, that served no objective purpose other than to generate pain and exhaustion? The only logic that could be assigned to it was the inanity that saw him digging side by side graves and tossing broken rock from one to the other.

At precisely 2000, the company formed. Ethan settled in beside Marius who stood blinking in the twilight. Captain Noland appeared in a fresh uniform, circling his position as a sprinter would check his starting blocks. A black pistol hung in a holster at his side. Off to his left, Corporal Calvi and two other NCOs stood in a haze of cigarette smoke. Noland nodded to Calvi, hoisted his swagger-stick and set out. The men uncoiled behind him, thick in the dusk with back packs and carbines cinched to their shoulders. The captain set to the task with little regard for the hours that would be consumed by the march. He strode purposefully, hips moving in the push/pull articulation of a small steam-driven piston. His chief corporal moved on his left, the orange beam from his battery light zigzagged across the road surface. The pace exceeded normal marching speed. Within minutes Ethan began lengthening his stride to maintain his interval. Evenings in the desert normally brought the relief of cooler air, but there was no relief on this night. Already beads of perspiration gathered at the base of Ethan's neck, and a small rivulet began making its way down his spine. Beside him, another sensation became distinct: Marius' bootlace slapping the ground in a steady rhythm.

Ethan knew that the pace could not be maintained over the distance they intended to cover. This was simply intimidation; Noland would soon tire. He glanced at Marius. His breathing was harsh, his eyes down, but he moved with determination. He remained silent, the outburst in the barracks room having somehow diluted his anger. Within the hour, they marched in total darkness. A band of dull pain began to close around Ethan's knees, the first faint intimation that he may have to drop back into a rear column. The pace would be slower there, he knew, but there was the likelihood that the slower rear column would eventually detach itself from the main column over time and find itself alone.

Within two hours, the company had developed into a sustaining organism, now capable of exerting some control over its movements. It settled into its own rhythm, and Nolan was obligated to slacken somewhat. Ethan's loss of conviction in his physical stamina vanished, and he concentrated instead on willful strides with no thought for other than the present moment.

A short burst of the Chief Corporal's whistle and they were directed to halt for 15 minutes. Immediately men dropped to the ground. Small globes or orange light began to dot the column. Marius slumped in beside Ethan.

"The games never stop. Ethan, see what they've done to me." He sat with his boot in his hand; from the inside of it came the sweet odor of rancid tissue. Marius flipped his lighter open and pointed to his right foot. A walnut shaped knot blossomed atop the joint to his big toe.

"I can't close my boot over it. As soon as anything touches it, pain begins shooting up my leg....of all the fucking luck..."

Ethan examined the area. "Your boots are too small. They're pinching that area."

Words soon came down the line. Two minutes to stand-up. Marius groaned. Ethan wondered how he could pull himself upright. "You'll never complete fifty kilometers with that bit of baggage. I'll call Noland to take a look at it."

Marius thrust his foot back into the boot. "Hell, no! Calvi will soon learn of it and jump me for going directly to the captain. You know Calvi _wants_ me to quit, he _wants_ to see me fall to the roadside. So you see I'm going to complete this march and then spit in his face when I get my regiment. Here, hold my lighter." He pulled his bayonet from its scabbard and cut a perfect oval above the toe. He grasped Ethan's shoulder for support. "Help me up."

Their path rose gently and they were soon moving parallel to a narrow trail. Noland turned briefly to check the column, swinging around as effortlessly as an accountant in an office chair. They sidestepped off the trail and took up the pace on a narrow roadway. With no sand to impede their step, the legionnaires adjusted their speed once again.

Ethan felt it immediately. The hard surface yielded nothing and replied to each foot step with a bone shaking return. The sides of his head began to throb. His shoulders seemed locked in place under the oppressive hands that bore down on him, determined to bind him to the desert floor.

They remained on the roadway for several hours. Precisely how many hours it was impossible to know. Ethan glanced up periodically and saw Polaris and Pleiades, blinking at him in the dome of night. Sometime during that period—events were becoming detached and jumbled now—-Marius reached down, seized the offending boot and tossed it into the brush.

The moon rode high enough in its arc to reveal the soft outlines of scrub vegetation and the silhouettes of the soldiers, faceless and nameless in their journey to nowhere. Unshod on his left foot, Marius pitched to one side, both arms wind-milling to maintain his balance under rifle and field pack. "Jesus," he muttered. His breathing became more rapid. He fell silent for a few minutes, then his throat opened and a dry rattle escaped.

Calvi appeared from the long shadow of the column. His face was obscured by the dry talcum of dust that now coated everyone. His voice was unmistakable.

"Close up that column there. Legionnaire on the right flank, identify yourself."

"Loridon...Marius."

"I thought as much. You're off your pace, you sack of shit. Close up that rank. And start moving like a legionnaire instead of a clown."

Ethan seized Marius' elbow.

"Try to stay upright. Lean on my hand if you must. Only minutes and we reach another rest. Just think about it, just think that you're not giving Calvi what he wants."

Marius grunted in acknowledgment. He held himself erect for a few minutes and then slipped again into his bandy-legged gait. Now his full weight fell on Ethan's side. Marius' skin had become cool and moist. Ethan heard him attempt to speak, but his speech was fragmented. They covered another hundred meters and Marius' bloated words continued, tumbling forth with no more meaning than the march itself.

At the next interval of rest, the company, now splintered with fatigue, took up a crosshatch position along the roadway. The symmetrical rows of men and their equipment had dissolved into a welter of prostrate forms motionless in the darkness; rifles, field packs, canteens, and ammunition belts now being aimlessly shed at each rest stop. By daybreak they would be invisible. The _Gbibli_ wind would soon rise up from Tunis and bury everything.

Ethan had lost all sensation in his knees and ankles. Marius lay beside him, comatose and silent. Ethan urged him to take water. He refused.

He didn't lift his head when he spoke. "I think I'll go to Tunisia. I have friends there, you know."

"Yes, I'm sure of it." Ethan nodded and touched his arm. The skin was cool, without texture. The first stage of heat exhaustion. Ethan took a heavy pull on his warm canteen water and massaged his legs.

I should be doing something more for him. I'll pull myself up and look for Noland.

But he felt curiously adrift, unmoored from the pit where he lay with Marius. He saw sand fleas biting on his stomach but he had little sensation. His shallow breathing didn't seem a part of him. A trickle of sweat wormed its way along his forehead.

Marius seized his arm. "Ethan, you've been a loyal comrade but I must leave you now. I surrender to the Legion. Victory over Loridon is theirs. Calvi will soon pounce on me and then where will I be? At his mercy again."

Ethan attempted to speak. Marius waved him away.

"No, I'll rest here for several days and then walk to Tunis. I have friends there you know." He nodded to no one and cupped his trembling hands over a match. He drew on the cigarette and passed it to Ethan. A shred of paper and tobacco clung to Marius' lower lip.

"Tunis?" Ethan whispered. "I've never heard you mention Tunis. And you're going to walk? With our regimental assignments only a week away?"

"I have no choice, my friend."

"Marius, listen to me. You know what becomes of those who desert. They may last a few days in the desert. If they don't die from exposure in a _wadi_ somewhere, they cross paths with the _fellagha._ Those Arabs will show no pity. After they cut your throat, their women will descend with their knives. Soon your balls will become a change purse for some housewife in Algiers."

Marius smiled at the metaphor.

The whistle sounded. "On your feet, on your feet!" Captain Noland began leading the forward elements in a chorus of _Le Boudin._ Calvi began circulating in the shadows, pulling some to their feet and prodding others with his billy. Marius grimaced and turned onto his stomach. "Ethan, cover for me. Give me enough time to crawl into the bush."

Calvi's footsteps drew closer. Ethan grasped Marius' arm. Marius wrenched it away. "To hell with all of you."

In the half light, Ethan pulled his pay packet from his helmet and slipped it into the cover of his remaining canteen. "If you're foolish enough to go, then go with this." He pushed it into Marius' hands. "The water is warm but it will nourish you. Draw small sips. If you encounter _fellegha,_ use the francs to buy their mercy."

The anger drained from Marius in an instant. He raised his hand. "Forgive my

temper. You—"

"Go."

Marius thumbed the spongy packet of francs and smiled. "I'll see you in Brussels when you finish your time with the Legion," he whispered. "I'll be a rich man by then. Remember what I said about the hunter and the hunted."

A moment later the night swallowed him.

The company turned back on itself and began the final leg. Ethan began to move, but the realization of Marius' loss weighed heavily on him. For the first time since he had sat with the rabbi, he turned to God:

_God I am not fit to step into your presence. But I do so this night. Watch over Marius._ _Lead him from the desert.. .Hear Israel, the Lord is our God._

Nothing. No echo. No understanding that it had reached God's almighty ear. Only the sense that it had fluttered away like a wisp of smoke. He studied the column behind him. It was impossible to determine how many others may have sought refuge in the darkness. A struggle within him began. It was not impossible that he could completely unravel. His legs would simply stop pumping; his lungs shut down from inhaling the sand mist that continually swept over his column. He would find himself at a place where he could not stop and could not continue. But eventually, the wonderful obscurity of the night would overcome him and he would simply draw his exhausted body under a low desert pine tree. There he would wait until the chink-a-chink of rifle harnesses and canteen cups could be heard no more.

When he thought about these sensations some days later, he recognized that it was some time after the company turned back toward Saida that he lost consciousness. No, he corrected himself; it could not be unconsciousness because he continued to move, palms flat, boots pressing the sand, a dry wind touching the back of his neck as he continued, and stride after stride. He reasoned that his brain and nervous system, having absorbed a disproportionate volume of pain, simply cancelled any continuation of it. He was not an educated man, but he speculated that given enough pain, somehow the higher level brain functions lift away from their attendant motor functions and the two organisms operated on entirely different planes until the pain stimulus ceases.

He recalled an isolated moment just before dawn when awareness streamed away from where he stood and spun along like a mechanical movie projector. At first, it wrapped him in pleasure: he saw a full color film, indistinct and fuzzy at first and then in full focus. A kaleidoscope of images: Irina beckoning to him but her voice unintelligible; Anna darting behind a tree in the Galicea forest; Marius with new boots marching at the head of the column, a sergeant's insignia on his collar; a view into the belly of the quarry at Dumanovka where Teo worked in silent prayer. Inevitably Stanescu took form before him, rank with plum wine, slowly circling Irina. The camera whirled to a stop and his legs began throbbing once again.

Try as he might, he could not recall the final turn in the route that brought them within sight of Saida. Later he learned that Captain Nolan had shown a humane hand and picked up seven abandoned men on the return leg. His map reading was acute enough to return them along the original route. Perhaps some lives had been saved.

Marius was not among them.

His sensory awareness did not return until sometime later that day when he sat on the edge of his bunk, his head bathed in alcohol fumes. A medic cradled his foot gently and pierced the blisters with a thin silver needle. He glanced over at Stefan, his bunkmate. The medic had removed Stefan's boots and placed a large bowl under his feet. Traces of blood streamed down his ankles and collected in red globes at the tip of each toe. Ethan watched as Stefan glanced down at his raw appendages.

His bunkmate smiled. He offered a whimsical salute to Ethan. "Now Legionnaires!"

* *

Eyes fixed. Chin two fingers above chest plate. Thumbs snug and aligned against trouser legs. Knees locked. The position of _preter attention_ that Ethan had come to know all too well. Noland's eyes swept over him in what seemed a reflexive habit. His bearing, haircut, trouser creases, service ribbons—all appraised in seconds. He appeared pleased with the legionnaire who stood before him.

"Stand at ease Itzkavitz. No doubt the rumour mill has told you that I'm seeing each man in the company for assignment review. You performed well on our little walk in the sand and I'm inclined to help you along. _Compris?"_

"Yes sir."

"Where do you see yourself a year from now? Garrison duty back in France? Perhaps a posting to the Sudan? Or maybe there's a young woman who's going to make the decision for you, eh?'' Noland broke into a smile. "Oh, I've heard all the stories. Not much would surprise me." He glanced at his watch and began a light tapping on his cigarette lighter. "Well?"

Out with it. "Indochina. I promised several of my bunkmates wed be together there. It's a compact we made, at least I think that's the word. If it pleases the captain, I hope to honor it."

Noland clenched his jaw once and then again. Ethan saw a muscle ripple just above the jaw line. He seemed to be working against a tide of emotion. He said nothing for several seconds.

"Do these names mean anything to you? Armitage —-Diest?

" _Non_."

"How about Zeelst?"

Ethan shook his head.

"They are only a few of the many I've seen come through here. And I try to track all of them after they leave. It's not too difficult. And I remember. That's almost too easy. Armitage? Killed in an ambush three weeks after leaving my company. Diest? Dead as well after six months in country. No bullet or shrapnel ever touched him. Blackwater fever. A death more painful than an enemy bullet I can tell you. Zeelst was a fine paratrooper but stood for two seconds too long in the drop zone and a sniper got him."

Noland allowed Ethan time to absorb his account. "So it goes. Sit." He toyed with his lighter. "Tell me why I should assign you to that meat grinder of a campaign in Indochina? Have you got some kind of death wish?"

"I...I would just as soon die for the Legion. This is the first time in my life I've got something worth dying for. I won't be looking for it, but if it comes my way, I'll be ready."

"We do need replacements there," Noland said. "I'm under some pressure to ship more. You know Juster and Strihan?" He didn't wait for a reply. "I intended to send those two. But they failed the march."

Ethan relaxed in his chair. "Captain, I completed your march. I didn't fail you. I think I can solve at least half your problem."

"How so?" Noland appeared irritated with Ethan's tone of familiarity.

"I'm ready to step forward to take Juster's place.''

"Oh? What makes you think you're qualified? Young Juster came from Paris. His wife was Vietnamese. He was fluent in the language. Essential skill, I would say. For him I'll waive the march."

"And Strihan?" Ethan asked. He offered the captain a cigarette and paused like the good acolyte until Noland signaled for the lighter.

Noland eyed the cigarette. "I won't ask where you got this, but it's delicious. Anything other than those damned _Gauloises_ is good for me. Sorry, what were you asking?"

"Strihan. What skill does he offer?"

"Ah, can't remember at the moment. I don't know him well, Calvi was pushing to get him over there."

"Sir, may I draw from this that Calvi didn't give you much on Strihan's background?''

"You may."

"Nothing about why he joined us?"

Noland eyed him. "I said I don't know the man. What? Speak up legionnaire."

Ethan hesitated. "I'm not sure it's honorable for me to—how do you say—accuse another legionnaire without him being able to defend himself."

Noland smashed the cigarette into the artillery shell casing that served as his ashtray.

"Let me worry about that. Say it."

"Rumor is that Strihan joined under a court order. He claims he was a _drogue_ runner in some opium ring near Marseilles. He's not shy about it. How he got through the Deuxieme? Anybody's guess. Now he claims to have thousands and thousands of francs stashed in profits. He's full of stories, says his Legion buddies can join his business after their enlistments expire. After a couple of drinks he brags about two men that got in his way. Both dead. True or not, don't you think he should be more fully vetted?"

By the end of the week, the barracks was alive with the story. Itzkavitz was now on the first draw for Indochina assignment. Strihan would be cleaning urinals until his discharge was processed.

# [Indochina  
l946](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

At the time the train carrying Ethan and 250 refugees threaded through the Austrian countryside on its way to Vienna a year earlier, one world conflict had ended, only to be replaced by a regional conflict in Southeast Asia. With the end of the war in the Pacific, Japan's occupation army withdrew from Indochina. The European powers were quick to seize the opportunity. Backed by British forces, France reestablished itself as the reigning power. The abundance of rice, rubber and the deposits of zinc and phosphate were more than enough to tempt the ministers of the Fifth Republic. Insurgent guerilla groups soon began operations against the French. Taking root in the remote region of what is today northern Vietnam and in two neighboring Chinese provinces, the insurgents began to coalesce under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Minh, a former deckhand on a French ocean liner and itinerant intellectual, who had earlier proclaimed himself President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho's irregulars, known as the "Viet-Minh," began to tighten their grip around Hanoi. On a sweltering afternoon in late l946, a French expeditionary force pulled into Vietnamese territorial waters. Full-scale hostilities erupted before the New Year.

When the French troop ship _Lemonier_ with Ethan and 850 legionnaires tied up in Haiphong harbor just after monsoon season, its arrival coincided with the advent of Chinese complicity in the eventual turn of events in Vietnam. Historians mark the date as the time at which all French chances of full and complete victory were doomed. Soon Viet-Minh battalions were disappearing over the Vietnamese border for training and refitting. Equipped with modern artillery and heavy weapons, the Viet-Minh returned as a potent military force, highly disciplined and prepared to fight to the death for "Doc Lap," a united Vietnam free of French rule.

On the convoy route north out of Haiphong, Ethan learned that his 4th Regiment had come under increasing pressure from Viet-Minh forces. The string of French outposts stretching from Cao Bang in the west to Long Son in the south had been overrun. Long Son, which was reported to be capable of its own defense, was abandoned in hours, with more than 1000 tons of ammunition, food and equipment left behind.

His column of heavy transport trucks and armoured vehicles rolled north along Route 1 towards Hanoi. They crossed verdant fields reflecting a green as brilliant as any Ethan had ever seen. They passed through small villages, seemingly uninhabited, but for the inert form of a skeletal dog dozing in the shadows. The trucks gathered speed on the dry roadway. Their powerful diesel engines threw bluish-black clouds of exhaust into the humid air. Hot otHhtires beat on the roadway and soon columns of fine dust rose in the air and coated every surface. They passed over dikes and rice paddies, at times bypassing farmers and their oxen teams. The rich alluvial odor of the paddies rose up to the soldiers, and several of them wrapped their faces in bandanas.

They inched deeper and deeper into the Red River Delta. The sun became a white orb directly overhead. No legionnaire could look directly at the sun. The canvas coverings on their vehicles had been peeled back for ventilation; the supporting metal slats radiated heat in all directions. A young man no older than Ethan sat behind the black steering wheel of their Renault cargo truck. He had stripped to the waist. Motorcyclist's goggles provided eye protection. A large tattoo of The Grenade, the Legion's coat of arms, covered his right shoulder. The windshield had been canted flat to prevent glass debris from striking him in the event a bullet struck. The legionnaires in the cargo bay were silent. Each of them had been instructed to carry two canteens of water and as many ammunition clips as they could carry. Two Italians slumped together. The bouncing of the truck bed seemed to flow effortlessly through their arms and legs. One man's jaw unslung itself and dropped open. A thin vein of saliva began to make its way toward the base of his chin. Nearby a corpulent German sat, his chin resting on the barrel of his carbine. He looked directly at the Italian soldiers but his face registered the empty gaze of a blind man.

Some time after the noon hour the motor column approached the valley entrance to Yen Bai Pass. The trucks slowed and it was then that Ethan saw a corporal on the opposite bench hoist his carbine and shout: "Safeties off. Make sure you have a full clip inserted. Ambush zone ahead."

A scout car with a heavy machine gun mounted atop its cab accelerated past them and took up a position where it could begin sweeping the road ahead. Their driver perspired as he dropped into lower gear and threaded along a road surrounded by ravines entirely covered by dense vegetation. Manioc plants laced the ground. They sucked all moisture from the earth and left the surface as dry as a salt flat. The men instinctively faced the outboard sides of the transport, searching the roadside for any movement—any sign— that might betray the deep slumber of the jungle.

A sharp incline as the roadway emerged from the valley floor. Surplus bandoliers of ammunition began sliding toward the rear of the truck. A loose canteen of water rolled along behind, standing erect for a moment and then tumbling as the truck gathered speed. A slight breeze passed over Ethan's bare arms. A few men began to release their helmet chin straps and pass cigarettes.

"Too soon to relax," the corporal said. "We're approaching Chan Mong Masif. No movement permitted here by night and daylight attacks can be a heartbeat away. Stay alert."

The corporal carried with him an air of resignation; an oblique movement of his eyes that suggested the Legion held no advantage along these fetid jungle trails. He drew a cigarette pack from his sleeve and Ethan noticed that he wore the shoulder patch of the 4th Regiment with the "Scout" tab above it. Every few days it was his duty to escort convoys through the delta.

Ethan studied his face, sensed his vulnerability. For some reason he was reminded of a circus act he had once seen as a child. A tight rope walker. Yes, a small man making his way along a shiny steel cord that bisected the top of the tent. The man's right foot, clad in what looked like a silver ballet slipper, probed the leading edge of the wire, then rotating to the other side, then back again. Always tentative, the path of a blind man, never certain if the next step would bring safe transit or a sudden plunge to death.

Ethan looked at the corporal more closely, wondering why he would make such an association. The corporal caught his glance and scowled at him.

They descended again. The dry pan surface of the roadway stretched into heavy shadow. Thick bundles of foliage gathered overhead and within minutes they were shrouded by the towering canopies of monkeypod trees. They threaded a serpentine curve without slowing. As the column straightened and the lead vehicle sought a shaft of bright sunlight not 100 meters ahead, the scout car swerved suddenly to the roadside and abruptly braked. The assistant driver leapt out of the cab, waving to the oncoming convoy. Ethan's driver began cursing as he drew to a stop. Several large boulders and tree trunks were strewn across the single lane road. There would be no passage until the obstacles were cleared by the armored vehicle. Immediately a squad of legionnaires alighted from the trucks and took up defensive positions to the front and along the flanks of the column. They stood in the shadows. To their right rose a limestone cliff of modest height, dense with thatches of elephant grass. A small brackish-colored stream lay to their left.

The two tanks in the column closed their hatches and traversed their cannons. The entire defensive movement took only seconds. The driver of Ethan's transport signaled them to dismount. "These clearings always take just take long enough for a sniper to do his work." With that, he seized his rifle and clambered out of the cab. Ethan looked for their corporal—more out of instinct than curiosity—and saw that he had already vanished. The column stood silently in the afternoon heat. The camouflaged vehicles, sprayed with random brown and green woodland colours, absorbed the heat and reflected it in shimmering funnels. Only the whine of a winch could be heard as the men attempted to clear the obstructions.

Ethan crouched near the rear wheel of the truck. There came a sharp urge to urinate. He put it aside. He bent all of his senses to listening. From somewhere deep in the tangles of elephant grass and lychee trees came the cry of a sunbird, then a yawning silence. He inched under the bed of the truck to find shade.

From atop the cliff came the hollow belch of a large mortar. The lead scout car, with two trees lumbering behind it on a length of cable, halted for a moment, then erupted in a white flash. Seconds later the roadway fell under a hail of mortar and artillery fire. The largest tank in the column, located halfway back in the 16 vehicle convoy, was hit by a bazooka round and lit up in a ball of flame. The Viet-Minh gunners, deadly accurate, then administered the same shelling upon a reconnaissance vehicle at the rear of the column. It was instantly immobilized, and with it the entire convoy became locked in place. From somewhere amid the noise and dust and cries came the command to take cover. Ethan and two others had already scrambled onto a dry creek bed.

The red earth embraced him and he responded. He extended his arms and buried his fingers in the soil. Like an innocent lover, he was not fully prepared for the moment of embrace. The jungle floor pressed against his thighs and moved to his pelvis, bringing with it the soft pleasure of contact. Overhead, the sky split with fire and smoke. He pressed his left cheek to the grass and felt the earth beneath him rumble under the impact of the mortars. The sun had moved from behind a delicate smudge of cloud and now thrust a white light that touched all who lay in its path.

His squad of Legionnaires was trapped in a sandy triangle. He reckoned it was some time after noon. The early hours had seen the sun climb the horizon rapidly as it did this close to the equator, the way an archer draws the string of a bow. When maximum tautness neared, the tension released and the heat pressed upon every object in its path as the afternoon progressed. But the heat did not stream from above. It seemed to seep from the ground beneath him. It seared the edge of his helmet. It left his fatigue shirt streaked with sweat. Moisture on his forearms revealed tiny amber streaks, a mixture of body salt and the residue of malaria tablets.

The heat coiled hungrily around moist human flesh; the infantrymen knew it would feast on every orifice and layer of skin. Jungle fatigues offered no protection—the folds of skin not exposed to the sun were the first to turn chalky and putrescent. Ethan's left eye stung from the beads of salt draining into it. Only his right eye provided clear vision.

Corporal Lorrain lay to Ethan's right. He remained silent and inert throughout the shelling. The scorpion that now approached him had been disturbed in its nest by the shrapnel. It scuttled along the sandy earth, halted for a moment, then angled in a new direction. Amid the din, Ethan shouted a warning to Lorrain, whose torso blocked its path. At the sound of Ethan's voice, the spotted arachnid—about the size of the ocean crabs Ethan and his squad mates had feasted on in Marseille—rotated its spiny tail into position and sunk a barb in the corporal's calf.

Lorrain registered no reaction. Only later did Ethan learn that Lorrain's life had already been sucked out of him by a single sniper's bullet that left only a drop of blood on his right temple.

Lorrain: always unwashed. His proudest possession a pack of playing cards with French whores pictured on each one. Before him, Vincenti, a youngster who wrapped rosary beads around his neck before combat. Both dead in a matter of minutes. Vincenti because he moved when he should have been silent; Lorrain because he was silent when he should have been moving. No matter. Lance Corporal Ethan Itzkavitz, _Matricule #63074_ sought only one death. It would not be a death wrapped in the traditions of the Legion. It would be the simple elimination of one man. He would administer it at his own place and time. He saw it as a privilege for someone who had persevered. He saw no wrong in it, no essential violation of the laws of God. He could reflect no further than this, because his sense of conscience had long since become numb.

He hoped Irina would somehow understand.

* *

The driver rolled in behind them. "Those sons of bitches have us all zeroed. This is exactly where the 100th Mobile was hit three weeks ago. Right at this fucking spot. I'll show you the blast marks if we don't get our asses shot off this time around."

The roadway fell silent for seconds as the mortar and artillery lifted. Then can the lethal fan of machinegun fire, shredding glass and canvas and rubber in methodical sweeps. The gunners were embedded somewhere in the granite cliff; some may have been firing from ground level; others seemed to be firing from elevated platforms in the trees. It was impossible for the men to know. The radio van was off the roadway next to Ethan's truck. He could hear someone repeating and repeating a Red Dart message, the equivalent of a May Day distress signal, requesting immediate aid from all forces in the area. A moment later, an enemy gunner identified the van and severed its three antennas with a single burst. Each bark of enemy fire would reveal a brief orange muzzle blast from within the vegetation. Ethan began to track the bursts and return fire. His two comrades took up position beside him and began to pin down the incoming fire. One target abruptly fell silent, only to be replaced by another line of fire coming from further up the cliff. Ethan's group shifted position as fresh banana clips of ammunition skidded across the jungle floor.

They commenced with a fresh volley. Nearby, several vehicles now sat on their hubs, their tires shredded by bullets. The air became thick with the smell of cordite, burning rubber and gasoline.

A young lieutenant in the radio van burst from a small hatchway and waved to them. "Get back, get back to cover! Napalm incoming." The officer ran full speed toward them. A short burst of fire from somewhere in the jungle caught him in the back of the legs. He tumbled face down, his fists pounding the ground in anger. Ethan sprang from his position, seized the lieutenant by his web belt, and pulled him to safety.

Two propeller driven fighters appeared overhead. They flew a lazy counterclockwise arc over the convoy, then leveled and headed on a direct gradient toward the Viet-Minh positions. A large black egg dropped from the lead aircraft. Five hundred gallons of jellied gasoline ignited in a conflagration that seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the air. Ethan lay with his face pressed into the dry earth. A band of heat passed over him, turning the surrounding tree branches to a dull gray and introducing destruction so complete that they would all have been consumed had it lasted for more than a fraction of a second. The firing ceased and the men drew themselves up. Black smoke obscured the cliff; the air heavy with the sweet odor of charred human flesh.

* *

What remained of Mobile Group 400 rolled into the outskirts of Hanoi at 3 a.m. the following morning. They had lost 21 killed, more than 50 injured and 9 missing in action. Seven vehicles completed the distance. Later came the report that one truck had been overrun by Viet-Minh infantry. Every man on the truck was slaughtered. Three men were castrated and a sergeant was beheaded.

Ethan and six others were placed in a separate transport for the last leg of the journey. A sergeant called up to them from the roadside just before departure. "Nothing to be ashamed of," he shrugged, "it's just the side of combat you don't hear much about." Ethan and his squad were all fresh to combat. As a result, each man in the open troop compartment had lost control of his bowels during the firefight.

* *

"So let me see if I understand you correctly." The adjutant, a lieutenant with a smooth face that had not yet surrendered to the sun, offered Ethan a cigarette. "You want to volunteer to join the patrols working the RC 4?"

RC 4 was a thin ribbon of jungle trail connecting Bac Ninh with the Seven Pagodas. "I have friends in the Fourth," Ethan said. "We trained together, drank together. They say it's a crack division. We promised each other we'd reunite once we got here."

The lieutenant sneered at the unwelcome sentimentality as he closed Ethan's personnel folder. They sat in a small tent a short distance from Cao Bang. "Your paperwork says no wife, no children."

Ethan shook his head. What does he care what's left of my family? He's doing what he has to do. He'll ask a few dumb questions to ease his conscience, then get on with business.

"I do prefer to send unmarried men there," the officer said. "You know we've lost control of the area? The slants seem to be everywhere. Up in the tree canopy, but you'll never see them. Entrenched in spider holes twenty feet deep...you you'll never see the trap door. Attacks are frequent. The Third took some hard knocks there a few months back. More KIA than I care to remember."

Ethan remained silent.

"One advantage we do have up there good leadership. "He's Romanian too, who's achieved quite a reputation for himself. He just made full corporal and we're working on putting him in for a valor decoration. Word on him? They say he's _trist_ when he's not on patrol. Never smiles, some say he's carrying something around inside."

Ethan forced a laugh. "We Romanians _are_ that way. Life is difficult in the old country. The poor are everywhere. Wild dogs roam the streets. You sink to your ankles in winter mud. Corruption is a way of life. This legionnaire you speak of...he's a good fighter?"

"Without question."

"He has the Dacian bloodline then. We're brothers in some way."

"Dacian? Who are they? The lieutenant appeared genuinely curious.

"Our warrior culture," Ethan said. "The Legion should have more of us. We're loyal and...excuse, I can't think of the French word."

The lieutenant drew a fresh cigarette. "I get your meaning, Itzkavitz. You think you could work and fight well under this man?"

Ethan brightened. "I think I've heard of him. Do you know what region he's from?

"Nothing in his records."

"If I knew his Romanian surname, it would help me."

"What does it matter? In the Legion, we go by nome-de-guerre."

"Was he working the patrols along RC 4?"

"Yes, he saw some action up there."

"I could be wrong, but his name maybe is Devereux?"

"That's the man." The lieutenant leaned forward. "Listen to this: last week he stalked eight of those slants on a night patrol, crawled after them into a jungle cave network. Killed five with grenades and the other three with his bare hands."

Ethan immediately saw the opening. "This Devereux. Is he fighting with other legionnaires from my country?"

The lieutenant thumbed through his files once again. "I don't think so. We don't see too many eastern Europeans in our ranks. Why does it matter?"

"In Romania we have a special comradeship among warriors. We know it as _perseverenta._ Roughly translated, it means 'through perseverance, victory.' We've had our share of invasions over time, and we discovered that we are more powerful together than we are apart. We've endured poverty, famine and some would say plagues of vampires. Some legacy, wouldn't you say?"

The lieutenant smiled and seemed taken with Ethan's candor. "So Itzkavitz, you have no family, no relatives in Europe?"

"Only in the old country and all lost in the war."

"If I send you up-country and you return in a canvas bag, who receives your remaining pay, your final death benefit? Have you thought about this?"

"Give it to the Wounded Legionnaires Fund. Those men earned it."

"Very commendable." The officer rose from his desk. "I'll make the assignment. I hope to see you at the end of your tour with the 4th . Stay safe until then and keep that Dacian spirit alive when the slants start shooting."

* *

They left what was known as Base Camp Lorraine and headed deep into the bush. Ethan and a brooding Portuguese bumped along a narrow trail, overhanging branches trees slapped their helmets. For a few kilometers, they ran parallel with RC 4, then left the trail and descended along the valley floor. Only the driver seemed to know how to reach their destination. By noon they entered an area of thick vegetation. Acacia trees towered over them. Vines from the highest branches unspooled to the ground. Thick cords of their roots ran along the surface. Their small jeep pitched from side to side as they climbed again toward a small plateau, shrouded on one side by the tree line and open to the east on the other.

At a signal unseen by anyone except the driver, the vehicle came to a halt. Out of the shadows stepped a figure, directing them to pull forward into a carefully camouflaged area. He surveyed each of them as they alighted from the jeep, checking ammunition belts and carbines, pulling on snap locks and fingering any loose equipment straps. His thick hands moved with a certain grace. They made small adjustments to the back packs, quickly tallied the ammunition loads, and fanned out over the weapons to insure all safeties were set. Moments later Stanescu stood before him.

Ethan stood and attention and marshaled his best French. "Itzkavitz, Ethan, matricule 63074, reporting..." Somehow the phrase for "as directed" escaped him.

Stanescu said nothing. His hands rested on his hips. The imprint on his thumb was plainly visible. _He is smaller than the Stanescu I remember._ _His voice I can't recall_. Nor did Ethan remember the thick hair that covered the back of his hand and climbed up his forearm until it met the sleeve of his stained fatigue shirt.

Stanescu moved to the next man, a Portuguese who had said nothing since Haiphong. He glanced at the man, then abruptly turned back to Ethan. "The lieutenant told me that you're from Romania. What city?" His voice was not the voice of a healthy man. It carried the raw timbre of a heavy smoker.

Ethan moved his lips, but no sound came from his mouth. The paralysis had come from nowhere.

"You understand French, eh? Don't speak to me in that fuckin Balkan voice."

Ethan pried his tongue from the roof of his mouth. "A...a small village. Tolnici."

Stanescu eyed him from a smoky region behind the pupil where Ethan knew a certain madness lurked. "Never heard of it. I come from the south. I'll tell you the same as I'm about to give this man. Put your native tongue in the closet. Here you speak good French. Without it, no place for you in the Legion."

His arms bore the tattoos of several Legion regiments. He appeared at ease with himself. He moved silently with no unnecessary motion. His skin carried a yellow tone to it; perhaps the aftermath of a bout of malaria. His eyes were unchanged. Hollow sockets of death. The small squad that accompanied him moved quietly around the staging area. A large net suspended from three trees and dotted with branches and vines provided perfect concealment. It shrouded the ground beneath it in a pea-colored light. The nylon edges of the net descended to the jungle floor and cushioned the voices within. The squad members occupied themselves with preparations for the night's mission. Ethan watched his every movement.

* *

No other replacements arrived during the afternoon. That evening's patrol required all legionnaires to comb the scrub leading to Seven Pagodas, one stop along the RC 4 route. They were instructed to rest until dusk and then move out. If enemy movement was detected, Devereux told them, establish an ambush site and wait. He tossed a large roll of black tape towards the man nearest to him. He instructed them to tape down any fixture on their fatigues and weapons that could generate noise. They moved into a single file and followed the point man. A confusion of vines and trees surrounded them. Hours later came the wait for sunset. No one spoke.

Some hours later they emerged from the jungle cordon and began moving across a broad savannah. Ethan was to act as a reserve element, along with the Portuguese who arrived with him. He watched him as they prepared for the patrol. What he saw didn't bring a sense of confidence. The man moved quickly in his preparation, but there was no focus in his efforts. His hands fluttered from his ammunition pouch to his rifle tensioner and back to his cigarette. He glanced up at Ethan, mumbled something, and returned to his frenetic routine. Ethan studied the puffy flesh under his eyes. For a moment, Ethan wondered what events drove him to this small rectangle of red earth on the other side of the world. He seemed a solemn man down to his last few choices.

Devereux instructed them to move at the rear of the column and observe all that took place. "Tonight you're students of jungle warfare." They advanced in a low slung position, fanning out as they crossed the plain. It was low ground, partially submerged in stinking surface water. Ethan watched him lead the patrol. His throat became uncomfortably dry. He felt the sharp urge to urinate once again. Deep inside his eardrum the heartbeat grew louder.

A sharp thump, a hiss of water and the legionnaire on the left flank screamed and grasped what remained of his right foot. From the tree line in front and both sides, the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire opened. Sharp cracks, three or four came very quickly, a pause, then another volley. The bullets snapped like whips as they passed overhead. Several struck the water with a sharp z-z-zzip; then the shot pattern began to move closer to where they crouched. Pinned to the ground, unable to move. For a moment Ethan's vision momentarily fixed on a large red ant, its antenna probing the sounds now coming in all directions. The air was heavier this close to the ground and red clay clung to his lips. He scratched out a breathing hole but debris soon blocked his nostrils.

Devereux turned and pumped his fist, the signal for them to move forward quickly. Ethan scrambled through the elephant grass; the others drew into a horseshoe pattern around him. They took their positions and delivered a continuous volume of fire for several minutes. A sergeant on the right flank shouted that the enemy position had fallen silent.

Ethan inched forward. Stanescu was easily within range and Ethan briefly considered if using his pistol might put greater stopping power in his hands. But what if a field surgeon examined what was left of Stanescu's head and discovered a slug from a French service revolver lodged in his brain?

He drew his carbine against his right shoulder. "Stanescu!" Devereux turned to hear the call. The _Caporal_ beside him reacted as well. Ethan leveled the front sight on his chest. Devereux crabbed around at the sound of his name.

"You are Stanescu, from Moldavia, aren't you?" Ethan spoke in their dialect. His front sight shifted to Stanescu's belt line.

"What... _what_? Who the fuck are you?"

Events are moving faster than he can think. And I am in control of him. It is to my advantage to take a full measure.

"I'm one of the Jews from Tolnici. Maybe you remember us? Family name Itzkavitz. My brother...my father...my sister? For sure you remember her?" He felt a prickling at the edge of his scalp.

The lull in the fighting continued. He heard once again the cries of Irina. Her bare legs elevated. The chant of the guardsmen as they watched. _"Duc-te-duci!. Duc-te-duci!."_ Go! Go! Stanescu's thick fingers coiled around her wrists, his torso alive with its outcroppings of swarthy hair and him hammering and pausing, hammering and pausing...

Ethan raised his head. He sensed no fear of enemy bullets. His heart continued its maddening pounding. He tried once again align the sights, but with no success. He was breathing much too hard. Stanescu began to crab away at a furious rate, lips parted in a burst of fury, his Romanian syntax now mixed with French curses. Ethan exhaled, aligned the rifle on his chest once again. Now center the rear sight over the front barrel, lock throat to steady aim.

Only a few of them saw the white flash. It filled the air with hot metal fragments. For a moment, the impact removed all that Ethan could hear. Then came a concussion upon him so great that he had no choice but to welcome the silence that followed. He sensed the slip of fluid draining from his right ear. Sulfur fumes were everywhere and he gagged once and then again on the combination of cordite and dust. His head seemed wrapped in gauze. He felt a rush of thankfulness that he had not lost his vision. A moment later he spat out a wad of red clay and caught sight of Stanescu snaking toward him.

He gestured to Ethan repeatedly. Stay. Don't move.

Ethan found the carbine still in his hands and lined the sights on Stanescu's chest. But the trigger didn't move. The mortar blast must have pushed the safety back on...no, the safely was still off. He curled his finger around the trigger again. Stanescu was only a meter or two away, he couldn't miss. But still the trigger, or his finger, refused to move.

Stanescu seized the barrel and pushed it upright. He gently cut the trouser leg and compressed the pulsing wound. "Stay with me, stay with me." Ethan eyed him for a few more seconds, then his head rolled back and his hands fell away from the weapon.

"Medic!"

Moments later Stanescu followed Ethan's stretcher back to the aid station.

* *

Ethan was back in his split pine bed in Tolnici—except that it was a white enamel bunk that shared space not with Sandu but with eight identical beds, each arranged in perfect symmetry. The place had the look of a Legion drill field. Where there should have been a reviewing stand, four glass IV bottles stood like private sentries.

He dozed.

Hours later he found himself in the squad bay at Sidi. His was the upper bunk. He watched as a fat horsefly lazily circled the globe just inches above his head. Beneath him Stefan turned over in his bunk, whispered something to himself, then grunted in agreement. But the sound came not from beneath him but across the wide vestibule where a wounded Legionnaire pleaded for more morphine.

He lay without a sound in the windbreak he had fashioned during his flight through the Padina forest. He watched the solitary figure make his way through the bush and begin to ascend toward him. The soldier grew larger and snapped commands at the dog who swept the grasses ahead of him. Ethan reached for his binoculars.

A cool hand touched his arm. The hand moved to his forehead and rolled back the lid on each eye.

A cart wheeling light. A piercing pain that emanated from some distant point, gathered on him and then coalesced in pleasure around a dull pinpoint. Sudden coolness, a rumble of the gurney to which he was strapped. Muted voices ...indecipherable. A hard vibration then a persistent drone.

Darkness. Uncoupled from any demand, somehow lodged in a space where there was no danger, no fumes, no heat.

Only sleep.

* *

He awakened to the slow revolutions of a white ceiling fan, slicing a ray of sunlight into fuzzy bars of gray and white. Irina moved into his field of vision. She grasped his hand. It was an immobile hand; it extended from a heavy dressing that covered his forearm. Irina drew closer to him. He sensed sound but could not understand. Her lips moved again.

Captain Noland appeared. He smiled and pressed Ethan's shoulder. Irina came into view again. She held a small white card with bold letters before him:

Ethan. You are here at Sidi-Bel-Abes. Hospital. Lower your head if you can understand

Ethan acknowledged.

You were near a grenade when it exploded. You've lost most of your hearing as a result. Shock they say.

The doctors say it will return. You arm and leg were hit with shrapnel. You have been in and out of consciousness for several days.

Ethan glanced down at the dressings covering his limbs.

Irina presented another card:

I see Captain Noland is writing as well. He wants to speak with you.

I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU.

Noland gave him a moment to adjust his vision, and then brought his note into view:

_Caporal_ ISTAKAVITZ: I say Caporal because I have promoted you based on the valor you demonstrated during the firefight in the Red River Valley. _Sergent_ Devereux has given his account of your actions. Can you understand me?

Ethan nodded.

It was he who similarly demonstrated great bravery by pulling you to safety and arranging for your evacuation. You suffered a severe loss of blood. Without his actions, you would not have survived such a fragmentation injury. Devereux was also injured. I regret to tell you that the enemy launched a counterattack after you both were hit. Only you, Devereux, and a handful of others survived.

* *

Day after day the fan blades beat at the heavy air. On one afternoon—it was impossible for him to distinguish one hour from another let alone one day from another—sound began to return in intervals. He first heard the rattle of two IV bottles at the bed next to his. Then the light tread of the medic as he crossed the floor to an adjoining patient.

Ethan lifted his body to an upright position and called to Irina. He heard himself, but his voice was that of another person, a voice shorn of any inflection. The words seemed submerged. The mad throbbing in his brain resumed.

Irina rose and sat beside him. Her hair was shorter than Ethan remembered, but she still looped the thick strands over both ears. Her skin had lost the pallor of the camp. Her hands clasped his; hands he had last seen swaddled in surgical dressings. She carried an alarming dampness in the eyes; dark half circles cast a shadow over her expression. She glanced at the IV bottles, the small metal bedside table crowded with medical instruments. A vein pulsed in her neck.

"How did it come to this?"

The question was directed at no one. In fact, Ethan realized, it was not a question from Irina as much as it was a statement of their condition.

She turned to him. "Ethan, I've been here for days watching and praying for you. And each day, I asked myself: why did it have to come to this?"

"Don't dwell on what's happened to me. I'm recovering—don't you see?"

She released his hand in an instant. "At what price? You may lose your leg, your hearing."

"Much more would be lost if I'd done nothing."

"You talk in riddles! Explain, please."

Ethan turned to insure Noland was out of earshot. "Devereux doesn't exist. He and Stanescu are the same person. What you don't know is that I almost put a bullet in his chest."

Her wiry shoulders seemed to shudder after Ethan's admission. She pinched her eyes for a moment and drew a short breath. "Ethan, did you understand the message Noland held to your face? The man you vowed to avenge has saved your life and will be decorated for doing so. And you—you sacrificed years of our lives to see him rewarded. Where is the honor you spoke of, Mr. Legionnaire?"

"It's not easy to understand. Honor is sacred among legionnaires. Just give me time to return to the regiment. In time, you'll see things better."

"There will be no returning to the regiment. Capt. Noland saw the doctors earlier. He used some military term. Oh yes—medically disabled."

Ethan blinked twice. He studied Irina's expression again. Disabled? Unfit?

A nurse working nearby heard the exchange. "This is your family member?" she asked.

"Yes, my brother."

"You shouldn't be here if you're going to address him in that tone. This is a ward for quiet recovery. Look at him. Now he's agitated. He'll require a sedative. You must leave at once."

* *

Late afternoon. Through an open window came a sharp bugle note signaling the day's retreat. Ethan's gaze remained fixed on the French tricolor as it was untethered from its position atop a luminescent pole and began to descend.

Disabled. Unfit.

He raised his arm and signaled for the opiate.

# [Sidi-Bel-Abbes  
1947](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

Voices. Echoes in the corridor outside his ward. Captain Noland? Why would he be here at this hour? The halo from the drug hung over Ethan, a soft haze allowed him to pause for a moment longer before drifting back to sleep.

Irina's voice jarred him awake. A sharp cry of disbelief. "No, I tell you. It's not possible—no!" Noland murmured a reply and fell silent.

Ethan pulled himself upright and found Noland standing at the foot of his bed. He tapped the metal frame with his walking stick. Ethan's attending physician stood behind him. "Caporal Itzkavitz, I'm under a Commander's Directive to surrender you to the Israeli Navy as soon as your condition permits. You are to be remanded to the disciplinary brig in Haifa and there to stand for a formal court-martial."

Ethan's narrow hospital bed seemed to be afloat, churning from side to side, caught in the eye of a foul wind. He grasped the white side railings. "Where is Irina? I need to see Irina!"

Noland softened for a moment. He turned to the doctor. "Dr. Moitesier here has given her a sedative and directed her to rest. I'm afraid she fainted when she heard the news."

"Now as to the charges"—Noland's jaw resumed its rigid posture—"they are enclosed in this packet. By law, I can't add anything to my statement this morning. If I did, it could be interpreted to mean that I had some knowledge of these acts and failed to take appropriate action. There's more than just your Legion career at stake here. I'm sorry, Ethan." He handed him a sealed packet and left the room.

Ethan swept his hand across the court document, an unconscious movement to somehow make tangible what seemed impossible. A nurse brought morning tea but he allowed it to sit unattended as the read the papers:

ISRAELI NAVAL COMMAND

Central Fleet Headquarters

Haifa, Palestine Protectorate

30 May 1947

NOTIFICATION OF GENERAL COURT MARTIAL CONVENING DATE: 10 August 1947

DEFENDANT: Ethan Itzkavitz, Navy Seaman, Third Class, Serial 96749.

CHARGES: Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice of the Defense Forces of the State of Israel (as amended), you are charged with the following offenses:

1) In violation of Article 3, sub. sec. 1a., you willfully deserted your duty station aboard the Naval ship STEADFAST, then temporarily moored in Marseilles, France. You remained absent when the vessel was scheduled to depart, thereby delaying movement by two days while a search was conducted.

2) In violation of Article 10, you fraudulently enlisted in the service of another nation and swore allegiance to the French government for a five-year term of service.

3) While serving with French forces, yet still under the authority of the Israeli Navy, you conspired to commit an additional criminal act in the region known as the Seven Pagodas, northwest of the city of Hanoi. There you attempted to murder one Sergeant Ion Devereux, the leader of your patrol on that day's action.

COMMANDER'S DECLARATION:

1) Defense counsel will be appointed for you. The appointed officer will be licensed in law in the State of Israel and be a serving naval officer in the Staff Judge Advocate Corps. All communication between the defendant and counsel will be considered confidential.

2) The charges noted herein are the result of an ongoing investigation. As the case develops, further charges may be added or dismissed.

3) In accordance with Article 8 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a three-judge panel of senior naval officers will hear the case and rule on the evidence.

FOR THE FLEET COMMANDER:

Benjamin R. Heyman, LT

Adjutant, Central Fleet HQ

* *

Fleet Headquarters

Haifa

One month later

Lt. Commander Lax sat before him in the annex to the brig. His court papers, Ethan's charge sheet, and a simple notebook and pencil were assembled on the desktop in precise formation. Above them a small ceiling fan, its metal blades pockmarked from the salt air, clicked in idle rotation. He read tonelessly from his notes as if he were instructing another person in solving an equation. Ethan fully expected him at any moment to finger a piece of white chalk and begin filling the slate board behind him with cryptic figures.

"Seaman Itzkavitz, I'm here only to defend you and to insure you receive the full measure of justice. But I can't do it all. You may be called to testify during the proceedings. These are very serious charges. I'm not interested in your guilt or innocence. The board will decide that." Lax tapped the charge sheet for emphasis. He lifted his gaze to Ethan.

"How is it that you, a native of Romania, should desire to enlist in our navy and then" —here Ethan watched him refer once again to the charge sheet—"join the service of another nation. What's this 'militia' they refer to?"

"The Foreign Legion. I served under the wooden hand of Captain Danjou." Ethan smiled at the turn of phrase. He knew Lax would have no idea of his meaning. He glanced at the wire mesh over the single window to their conference room. He sensed no fear. The queasiness in his gut had subsided many months before. Even the pinched urge to urinate at moments of stress had left him. He looked once again at his pale defense counsel and said nothing.

"The Foreign Legion? Those soldiers of fortune who fought for their lives in Indochina?" Before Ethan could respond, Lax shook his head in disbelief. "A young Jew joining that band of misfits? Why? France is by no means sympathetic to the Jewish cause. "And this..." Lax forcefully slipped the charge sheet between his thumb and forefinger. "This business of an ongoing investigation. Are there other offenses you could be accused of?"

Ethan said nothing.

"More serious than these?"

Ethan shifted his gaze to the window once again.

"I'm only three years in the legal service." Lax abruptly stopped and glanced around the room, seemingly seeking deliverance. "Are you suggesting that you committed other acts that have yet to appear on the indictment, that have escaped my attention?" Lax held the papers closer to his owlish reading glasses, scanning the paragraphs for any entry that may have eluded him. "How is it that our Navy learns of your alleged acts near Hanoi and now desires to prosecute you for something you may have committed thousands of miles away?"

"A young corporal was there. He saw it all happen. He may have been the one who reported on me. Who knows? It even seems unreal to me. To your first question I say nothing."

This bright young officer in his immaculate khaki uniform and black tie would never know of Tolnici or the Iron Guard. Dumanovka would mean nothing to him, or the Seven Pagodas and all that followed.

Lax somehow sensed his frustration. "I can help you only if you tell me. You face severe penalties for these offences if they're proven. Save yourself with the truth. Start from the beginning. Omit nothing."

Ethan drained his coffee cup and began.

* *

By late afternoon their opaque glass ash tray had filled with the remains of too many cigarettes. Lax was in no hurry to depart. Ethan's account had caught his interest.

"So to repeat what you said earlier...your intent was not to abandon your service to Israel as much as it was to find a means to reach this Stanescu fellow? To visit a punishment upon him for your sister's rape?"

"That's a fancy way to put it. I would say I wanted to avenge what he did to Irina—and for that matter what others like him did to my people."

"And to locate him after you learned he had fled to the Legion, yes? Much easier to join the Legion from French soil then attempting to do it from Romania?"

"Without question."

"Did you conspire with anyone to plan your desertion?"

"No sir."

"But here the papers allege that you conspired with an unnamed party to murder this Stanescu once you were in the war zone. Is this factual or hearsay? And who was this person?"

"Hearsay—what? This is not a word I understand. Repeat please."

Lax worked to control his patience. "Think of it as what people have heard, gossip, rumor. Something not supported by facts or evidence. We could defeat it in court. You understand now?"

"It means nothing to me. Only one other person even knew my plan. His _nome de guerre_ in the Legion was Marius. A comrade in arms. We were together at Sidi. He was the one who located Stanescu for me. A clever fellow, but I'm not sure I believe everything he told me about his life in France."

"Did he conspire with you?"

"Help me with the language again."

"Did you discuss or plan with him your intent to murder this Stanescu?"

"No. It was my secret."

"Would this man Marius be prepared to testify on your behalf? He could well help us eliminate the conspiracy charge." Lax flipped to a clean yellow sheet. "Where is he presently located?"

"He said he was bound for Tunisia. I prayed for him. He's now over the wall."

"Over the wall?"

"Deserted. He had a belly full of the Legion."

"Any idea of where he might be? Perhaps we can..."

Ethan interrupted. "Commander, he is open to the same charges from the Legion as I am. He's taken steps to remain hidden. The last place you would find him would be in an Israeli or French military courtroom. I'll never see him again—pity in a way because he become a close friend."

Lax's pen moved quickly over the ruled tablet.

"Very well. And this—" He patiently thumbed the papers. "This allegation of murder. A capital offense as you know. But from what you have said, I gather you didn't harm the man?"

No sir.

"Was it your intent to harm him?"

"At the time, yes. I wanted to kill him. For Irina, for Sandu and when I think about it or all those who fell under the boot and chose not to resist. I am thinking too of the Ruga family and the Stachmans. They chose not to strike back and are now forgotten."

"I know nothing of this Marius fellow and I advise you not to mention him. What you say is a noble sentiment, Ethan, but I don't see how it will reduce the gravity of these charges. As we sit here today"—Lax glanced at the wall calendar—"on this day in late June we have no one willing to testify on your behalf or dispute the charges. It's only your word." Lax paused and studied his notes. "You remarked earlier on your intent to murder Stanescu. You said, 'at the time.' Are you saying you no longer harbor hatred toward this man, that something has changed?"

"I always pictured a time when I would have him under my thumb and he would know it. He would have no way to resist. Defenseless, just like Irina. I'd toy with him, take him down to the level of Irina, knees and elbows raw from rape. I wanted him to beg for mercy—but he did something else."

Lax looked up from his notes. "What was that?"

"He saved my life."

"Spell his last name for me." Lax's writing now took up a more rapid pace. "Any idea where he would be today?"

"I believe he was treated at the same hospital where I was. At Sidi. He took some fragmentation pieces as well. But that was months ago and half a world away."

"So now you have no one to testify for you and no one to testify against you?"

Ethan took a long moment before responding. "I suppose so. There is really only one thing to do."

"I'm listening." Lax reached for Ethan's cigarette lighter.

"Find Stanescu. Bring him here. Let him testify."

_"What?_ Ethan—you attempted to kill him. He heard you threaten him. He saw your rifle pointed at him. In the eyes of the law your intent plays a decisive role. The panel will pay attention to it. Okay, a mortar round blocked your attempt to kill him. But if that hadn't happened, you would have pulled the trigger. Yes?"

"I think you know the answer. So maybe the mortar round saved me as well, eh?" Ethan inched closer to him. "Listen to me. He could have left me for dead at Seven Pagodas. But he risked his life to save me. Why? Because he knew that after the second round of shelling there would be few survivors. 'Death Before Dishonor' was our regimental signature. To lose as many men as he did that day and for him to survive, well—it would ruin his career. He needed someone alive to testify to his valor. And I did. I wrote a statement for Captain Noland."

Lax sighed and slapped his notebook closed. "Let me see what I can do." He gathered his belongings and left without a word of encouragement.

* *

At two minutes past 1 pm on a day when the harbor winds brought fierce rainfall, Lax began his summation before the panel.

"Gentlemen, you have had the opportunity to review the charges against Seaman Itzkavitz. My client and I well understand that these are serious charges and we have spent many hours together discussing how his actions have led to this legal proceeding. Throughout my remarks today, I would ask you to bear in mind that my client has been entangled in two roles, neither of which were his choosing. The first? That of victim. The second? —That of hero. More about that in a moment.

"Allow me to explain the first condition. Mr. Itzkavitz and his family were among the thousands plundered and attacked by the Iron Guard in his native home of Romania. He witnessed his sister's rape. In fact, he was forced to watch it—let me correct that—he was forced _at gunpoint_ to photograph it. Soon thereafter, he and his family were sent to the Dumanovka labor camp in southern Romania where he lost his brother and father to the fascists. My client vowed to the remaining family members that he would locate and punish the man, one Ion Stanescu, who had committed these unconscionable acts. He didn't learn the location of the man until after liberation. In order to reach him in Indochina, Itzkavitz knew that he too would have to join the Legion. He abandoned his ship in Marseilles in order to take up the pursuit."

"Objection, counselor." The voice of the officer seated immediately to the left of the presiding judge. His frown had deepened with each of Lax's statements. Ethan saw that his feet rested several inches from the polished floor. A compact man still intact with the penalty of being several inches shorter than his peers. The placard before him read CAPTAIN LEVIN.

"You say he abandoned his ship" Levin said. "There is nothing in naval law that speaks to abandonment. That word implies that he simply gave up his duties on the ship. It does not touch upon the consequence of such an action. The charge against him is desertion. That term is entirely different in this context; it means that he willfully forsook his duty to his captain and crew and endangered all of them by doing so.'' He thrust himself forward on stubby arms. "Pay closer attention to your word choice, counselor. They disturb me."

Lax was undeterred. "Sir, I appreciate the distinction. What I intended to convey was his motive. Let me rephrase it: did he willfully desert his ship? My client acknowledges that he did so. But as I hope the Board will ascertain, he did so not to evade his obligation to the Israeli Navy but to pursue what he saw as a higher obligation: the honor of his family.

"As a corollary to this, his allegiance to the French government was simply a means whereby he could join the Legion in an attempt to ultimately confront Stanescu. There was no intentional fraud on the part of Seaman Itzkavitz, no intent to defraud the Israeli Self Defense Force. His intent was only to find a means of avenging his family. And so I ask, would any of us have done things differently?"

With that, the Chief Judge ordered the last remark struck from the transcript. He leveled his fountain pen at Lax. "Commander Lax, we are not on trial here. We're not facing these charges. Nor are we the ones who must answer your question." He glanced at the transcriber to insure he understood. "You may proceed."

Lax acknowledged the warning but maintained present course and speed. "If the panel will take a moment to peruse the documents I have distributed. At Exhibit One, you see an extract of Ethan's service record. Without doubt, he was an exemplary sailor and I draw your attention to a statement in the record from a Warrant Officer Shawditch who writes at length about his potential for duties as a principal navigator."

The Chief Judge became even more impatient. Counsel, we understand the context of the two counts mentioned in the charge sheet. Your comments have been helpful to our understanding of your client's actions. Proceed to the conspiracy charge."

"Sir, then let me ask another question that I think the court will find less disturbing. It is the question of hero that I mentioned earlier. We have not heard this word in any way connected with my client's actions. And yet it obtains in the situation. How can I say this? Because only one man knows the circumstance under which my client's actions took place. ...and that man is _Sergent_ Ion Devereux."

" _Hero?_ Did I hear you correctly Commander Lax?" Levin stood, the brass buttons on his dress white uniform reflected on the glass desktop. "We are sitting in a formal court martial proceeding. We have a defendant before us. There is nothing in the articles of indictment that speaks of heroism. Of infractions? Yes. Of violations of trust? Without question. But don't let me hear of talk of heroism. You insult us with such language."

Ethan studied Captain Levin as he took the edge of his seat, presumably ready to spear Lax on his next argument. It occurred to Ethan that he had never encountered a short man who was a peace with himself.

The judge again shook his head in irritation. "The charge, counsel, the charge—that's where you need to channel your attention."

Lax nodded in agreement but said nothing. Before the judge could once again align his pen on him, Lax turned to the guard. "I call _Sergeant_ Devereux to the stand. I have arranged for an interpreter and ask the court's permission to allow that person to enter."

The judge acquiesced, now becoming somewhat more tolerant of Lax's style.

Ethan turned as Stanescu entered the courtroom and approached the stand. He saw a person whose stature seemed withered away by some alien element, his arms hanging from his dress uniform as if a stroke had silenced them. The years in the jungle had left his skin with a dry tannin tone; the whites of his eyes had long since surrendered to the effects of malaria drugs. A channel of violet skin rippled from the edge of his jaw to just above his left ear, as if a branding iron had been drawn along the axis of whatever projectile struck him. "Now Sergeant Devereux" Lax said, "when I last made contact with you, you spoke of your willingness to appear here and you were quite emphatic that the defendant here was never recognized for an act of heroism that took place in the Red River valley. Could you explain that to the court?"

The interpreter motioned for Lax to reduce the pace of his interrogation. Lax waited for Stanescu to respond.

"Yeah, I can do that. I'm the only one who can do that. Too many of my legionnaires were killed that day. This man Itzkavitz was among the few who lived through it." He glanced around the courtroom. "My talk is okay? You understand? My jaw, it only opens enough for a cigarette. I know I mumble."

"We understand. Take whatever time you need" Lax said.

"We were hit in the Delta. What I saw when the firing began was a commo van under fire from an enemy automatic weapon and there was this single officer—"

Lax cut in. "Commo van? What is commo?"

"Communications. A radio truck. Antennas coming up off the roof and this machine gunner...see he was god damn good...blew off those antennas like they were cornstalks. One sweep and they went up in pieces. Okay and then here comes Lieutenant Cassett running out of the van like a scared rabbit. Any of us would be doin' the same. The gunners were raking the side of it shit was flying everywhere." Stanescu wiped away the perspiration.

"Me and my men are on the opposite side of the ravine and the lieutenant is tryin' to reach our position, tryin' to find some cover. Scratchin at the ground he was, I can still see him. And then he's about halfway to us when a round catches him in the back of leg. He yelps just before he hits the ground. Everybody makes their own sound when they're hit, not a one alike I've ever heard. His was more like the sound from a dog than a man."

Stanescu patted his breast pocket as if looking for a cigarette, then seemed to remember where he was. "And holy Jesus, Itzkavitz is on his feet, slidin down the hillside and the gunner is trying pick him off. I remember little eruptions on the ground near him as the slants worked to get his range. Another gunner opened up and it was noise everywhere and there's Itzkavitz moving under a shower of tree branches and leaves. The bullets were chewing up everything around him. Like a cloud of bees. Then Itzkavitz is beside the lieutenant. He grabs him by the belt and drags him sideways behind a huge anthill. I tell you this is something you just can't stop watching. But I grabbed hold of myself and shouted to put down a blanket of fire at that gun emplacement. Why the mortars didn't come in at that moment I dunno. But we must have jacked them long enough for Itzkavitz to reach cover. Next thing the mortars fire up and the Viets start walking the rounds toward the ant hill. Itzkavitz is caught in the midst of it. Then it was my turn. One time I watch him covering the lieutenant with his body and then a white flash. I didn't think Itzkavitz survived it. That's about all I remember."

Lax found his opening. "Seaman Itzkavitz is under serious charge here—that he intended to murder you, to avenge events that had taken place in Romania during the siege of the Iron Guard. And during the event you've just described and the time immediately thereafter, did he threaten you or make an attempt on your life?"

Stanescu rolled his head back.

"You got the wrong set of eyes, Mr. lawman. The only ones who were trying to waste me on that day were the fuckin' slants."

* *

Military tribunals and courts martial lack many of the safeguards of civilian courts, and it came as no surprise that the absence of a jury led to a swift verdict. Two days later Ethan and Lax stood before an immaculate table of dark wood still giving off the scent of fresh carnuba wax. The judge rose, nodded to his two impassive panel members, and began.

"Gentlemen, I shall read our findings as they appear on the charge sheet. As to Count #l, the willful abandonment of duty aboard an Israeli navy ship, we find Seaman Itzkavitz guilty as charged. His desire to avenge the crimes upon his family is entirely understandable and the panel sympathizes with the privations they endured. However, those factors in no way lessened his obligation to remain loyal to his ship. Desertion is not an option."

The judge looked directly at Ethan. "Had you been in a war zone, you could have endangered the entire ship and its crew by your actions. As to Count #2, the panel does not see merit to this charge. Your fraudulent action was only to secure a path to Indochina and to locate _Sergent_ Devereux. And your cause was an honorable one; it did not stem from cowardice or treason. Your disloyalty to the Israeli Navy is implicit in the first count, we see no need to recommend a second punishment.

"We find the charge #3 of conspiracy to murder specious at best. We could find no evidence of conspiracy. Now the judges do note that you were consumed with anger and a desire for vengeance earlier in this episode. However, from what we gather you chose not to act on this motive. Sergent Devereux was the only person present during the scene in question and his testimony does not reveal any attempt on his life.

"In consideration of the foregoing, it is our judgment that you be formally discharged from the Navy of the State of Israel with a General Discharge. The panel has within its authority the ability to levy a substantial fine, imprisonment or both. There was some sentiment among the panel that such should be your penalty. But after extended discussion, the panel has chosen not to do so. For my part I will say that we are a people who understand persecution all too well."

Levin sat without expression and began gathering his papers.

Lax and Ethan stood as the judges departed. "Stanescu," Ethan whispered, "how did you...he could have been anywhere, using any name. The Legion protects its own. How did you find him?"

"I'll let him tell you," Lax said.

"Pardon? I don't understand."

"He had one condition for appearing here. I learned that after speaking to Noland. Stanescu was not difficult to locate. Noland says he's in some difficulty."

They sat in two metal chairs outside the Judge Advocate's headquarters. Ethan had not been permitted outside at any time during his confinement. He inhaled deeply and noticed that the harbor winds had shifted to the northwest.

"He wants time alone with you. It's his only request."

" _His_ request? Why would I honor such a thing? I owe him nothing. And you—you sound like you support him. Listen, I'm not going to—-"

Lax silenced him. "Ethan, you see the water reflecting the sunlight, the gulls making lazy circles? He gave you your freedom to see those things, correct?" Give a little on this."

"And you made this agreement without talking to me?"

"A defendant doesn't need to know everything his counsel is doing. The court has freed you. What else matters? You consent to see him, he signs the affidavits for the court and you pack your sea bag."

"In other words, no choice here. You've made the decision for me and I must deal with the devil. Is that what you're saying?"

"For God's sake Itzkavitz! This man saved your life five months ago and now testifies at your court martial to get you off charges. Okay, he may have had other motives as well. But what more can you ask?"

Ethan stood and scanned the harbor entrance. Until this point, Stanescu had been a manageable evil, a threat just beyond his reach and therefore safely contained. Now he waited for him only minutes away from where he stood. "I'll see him. But on my terms. Give me a half hour to get my thoughts together."

* *

Word on Ethan's verdict had already reached the security barracks. He found his belongings neatly stacked on the edge of his bunk.

The duty guard stood watch. "Hey, that's good news Itzkavitz. I never thought they had much of a case anyway. Why prosecute a man for protecting his family? Waste of time if you ask me." He shook hands with Ethan and took his leave.

Ethan failed to share his sense of relief. Another chapter had yet to play out, a demand that he once again look aside, never mind that Lax's bargain with Stanescu carried not a shred of integrity. If you want your freedom Ethan, then sit down with your enemy, reason with him, placate him, give him what he wants. Then be on your way.

He sat down and opened the folder with his release documents.

I never agreed to this. I followed this man across two continents only to be forced to admit that he won me my freedom, perhaps even to be asked to forgive him?

He glanced at his watch. Lax and Stanescu would be waiting in ten minutes. He unthreaded the cinch from his seabag and examined it. A bit too much length but it would serve the purpose. Now an inflexible length of wood or metal. His cell had long since been emptied of any contraband. A small wooden ruler sat on his desk. He flexed it several times and reasoned that it would serve his purpose if he didn't force it. Twist it quickly at first and then slowly as it gathered tension around the neck. He set to work fashioning two half hitch knots at the end of the cinch and threading them over the ruler.

* *

The small conference room was an austere affair. A small desk covered in cheap veneer, two ash trays. A metal fan attached to the wall groaned continually as it rotated from side to side.

Stanescu rose as Ethan entered. A moment of silent appraisal hovered between them. Stanescu offered his hand. Ethan remained standing several feet from the desk, eyed him for a moment more, and locked his arms across his chest. After Stanescu had taken his seat, he gestured to Ethan to do the same. Ethan remained motionless.

Stanescu tossed a packet of cigarettes on the table. He fumbled with the cellophane wrapper and made two attempts to locate a fresh cigarette. At length, he brought a half finished butt to his lips, his bloated hands shaking throughout the process. His right hand and forearm were disfigured by small globes of red and purple. Ethan had seen the condition in the Legion hospital: repeated intravenous injections that rupture the blood vessels and bloat the tissue.

"Not easy to look at me, is it?" Stanescu lifted his eyes to Ethan. A jaundice of some sort had swept through both eyes, and it was difficult for Ethan to see where his colored irises ended. Then he corrected himself. There really was no color to his eyes. Ethan saw two sockets where years of malaria drugs had left Stanescu looking like a blind man.

"Why did you lie to the court?" he said. "Why deny that I would have put a bullet into your chest?" He snorted. "Make that two slugs. The second one would have gone into your heart if I could have controlled my aim."

Stanescu hunched forward. "I've got my reasons. Just as you had for tracking me down. Listen, no matter what, we're still Legionnaires. Yet you refuse to be my comrade."

"I'm a Jew before I'm a legionnaire."

Stanescu seemed undeterred, an old soldier still wrapped in fidelity to the Legion. "I remembered you when you shouted Tolnici that day in the delta. Oh yeah, I remember Tolnici and those other villages, being drunk on plum wine and fascist bullshit most of the time. What's a little lie now compared to those days?" He managed to get a cigarette lit, took a drag and let it out with a wet cough. "You got family? Brothers, sisters? They make it okay?"

Ethan shot toward the desk and pulled Stanescu's left ear towards him. eHe had no time to react. "You still have your hearing? I'm going to shout in case you've lost as much as I did, okay? My sister? Did she make it?" His hand slipped to the back of Stanescu's neck. "Her name was Irina. Not a name given too commonly to Jewish girls, eh? You must remember her because I saw her sink her fingernails into your arm when you raped her."

Stanescu shifted in his chair and said nothing. Ethan yanked back his sleeve. Only the Legion Coat of Arms appeared. He offered no resistance. Ethan grabbed the opposite arm and searched the keloided skin until three pink crescents came into view.

Ethan slipped behind him and withdrew the garrote from his sea bag. Stanescu's head dropped to the table, his hands under this forehead. The garrote slipped easily into place. Only fragments reached Ethan's hearing. "Young girls...pretty ones. ...your sister? How the hell would I know?"

Irina's voice: t _he past is dead, the past is dead._ Ethan allowed himself a moment more to study Stanescu's neck, now pinched and shrunken, the skin a spider web of yellow pustules. _Irina, I hear you._ He plunged the garrote into the sea bag and wrenched the door with such force that the brass knob embedded itself in the door panel.

Lax accosted him. "I heard the shouting."

"He shows no remorse. Nothing."

"What did you expect?

"What's the point? He's only concerned with his own skin."

"Did he mention his request?"

Ethan eyed him for several moments. "Who are you representing here...me or him?" Lax said nothing.

At length Ethan reentered and took the chair opposite Stanescu. "I'm listening."

Stanescu lifted his head. "My life, it's running away from me. I'm being released from the Legion, advanced stage of yellow fever. The docs say the fever won't kill me, but the punji—bad stuff. Just after our action in the delta, I stepped on one. It poisoned my blood. I saw the look on your face when I first came in. I'm wasting away. Maybe six months, for sure a year and I'll be gone."

Stanescu struggled to bring another cigarette to his lips. At length he steadied his wrist with his left arm, puckered his lips and drew his head to the weed. He appeared to be waiting for some expression of condolence. He drew a second cigarette. "There's this business with my final arrangements."

He spoke as if Ethan had some sympathy for his circumstance.

"Oh? Families usually handle those details." It occurred to Ethan that a cavalier manner would soon close out the discussion. "Is there some obligation you think I owe you?"

Stanecu sighed. "There was a Lebanese wife. Plenty of other women too, some of the best I found in Hanoi. I'm not foolish enough to think any of them will be at my funeral."

Ethan glanced at his watch.

Stanescu gathered up his cigarettes and lighter. "I don't get you. I pulled you to an aid station in the Red River battle. I lied to those Navy prigs about your plans to put a bullet in my chest. And now you sit here without a word of gratitude. I gave you your freedom, _Caporal_ Itzkavitz."

Ethan stood. "But you took much more than that."

"Remember the oath we took at Agrimont? Does loyalty mean _anything_ to you?"

Ethan said nothing.

Stanescu eyed him for a long moment. "Goddamn it...I never thought I'd ask a Jew for anything."

"Ask God for forgiveness. I'm just a kid from Tolnici."

"Ethan, look at me."

The sound of his name kindled something in him. He sat back and met Stanescu's eyes. "I'll pray for you."

"I'm beyond forgiveness or prayer. Just see that I get a decent burial at Sidi. With no blemish on my record. A grave marker, you know— Legion-style with the campaigns I fought in."

"Loyalty to a Legionnaire who saved my life? That's all you're asking?" He held Stanescu's fevered gaze. " _Comme vous voudrez."_ As you wish, you have my word."

Stanescu placed his hands palms down on the table and rose. He bowed slightly to Ethan. His eyes glistened as he extended his hand. "My comrade, I thank you."

Ethan rose quickly and braced himself against the tabletop. He shifted his injured leg and reached for the door. Stanescu was left with his hand extended.

A few moments later, a harbor buoy sounded. One strike of the gong, then two rapid repeats. The incoming evening tide.

# [Tolnici Village  
1947](tmp_7ac230ab0b5ec24bd41806dd0867562c_6I8nxH.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_003.html#ref_toc)

_Tata,_ Father, I am thinking of you this day. I am sitting here at your small desk. We have built it into a small office, you see, and you would be very proud of us. I am now the proprietress of a small school. We are dedicated to the well being and religious education of those children of our faith left behind by the war. Ethan is here with us, but more about him in a moment.

Yes! I opened the school after I became so struck by the number of children who had lost their parents in the war. The authorities transported them back to Tolnici, but there were no families left to support them, to nurture them, to help them forget the camps. You should have seen them! We began taking care of them with no money. Soon a small amount came from the new government. Then the living relatives of the children gave us what they could. Word spread and others have donated. This survival is nothing after what we have endured!

Ethan is here and has recovered somewhat. He has been working at the school and he has met a young woman from the Set. They are to marry in the spring. He receives a small pension from the French government for his service in Indochina. His wound deprived him of some of his hearing and left him with not much movement in his right leg. But it does not slow him down in any way in his willingness to work with the children. Many of them have suffered wounds as well, but their injuries are invisible. He helps them all. And they see him as an inspiration!

For me I should say that I have lost the use of my right hand for writing. But I have trained myself to make use of my other hand. I practice every day.

We often speak of you and Sandu. Dora believes it must be God's wish that you are not here and at this time I am thinking that it is best. We returned to the village and to almost nothing. Everyone here is starting over again, as if the clock has been turned back 10 or 20 years. Antonescu may be gone, but the government is doing nothing more to help us. Mihail still comes round to see us. When he hears of it, he shrugs. "Same dogs, different collars" he says.

Cyprian has become our adopted son. I suppose that is the best way to put it. He helps us at the school. He does not ask for much.

The banks have not been helpful to us. We must barter for everything. Currency is worthless. Ethan has claimed that as his responsibility and so far we have been able to scrape together enough to feed the children. We take what is left.

This week I learned that the new Petrescu government will not pay any compensation for what the Guard did to our village. They say they sympathize with our losses but they want to rebuild the oil fields instead!

Today the postman came by with a formal letter announcing that the bank is closing up its farm loans. No one in the village can pay. So we have all been told that we must pack up and leave. Where? They don't care.

_Tata_ I despair.

* *

Irina locked her office for the day and made her way along the narrow vestibule to the front of the house.

Dora and Ethan stood side by side at the doorway, speaking to a young courier. He withdrew a small packet from the saddle bag on the side of his motorcycle and requested that they sign for it. His laced boots were splattered with mud and both elbow pockets on his leather jacket revealed patches of moisture. "I have ridden from Iasi," the young man announced with an air of distain. "There they have paved roads."

He took the receipt without another word and vanished in a trail of blue exhaust.

"And what is this?" Dora laughed. "A small box from somewhere abroad. It has a customs tag on it and the information printed on it says the contents are ten grams of Tunisian sand!"

"Here, Ethan, it's addressed to you." The small brown box had now become an object of intense curiosity. Both women moved closer to Ethan as he examined the box. It carried no return address and Ethan's address was meticulously written in a florid script.

"I know of only one person in Tunisia," he said. Dora offered her scissors and Ethan made a neat incision along the top of the box. He inverted the box and a stream of sugar colored sand drained from it.

"There's something else in the box. I can feel it." With that he peeled back the paper lips and extracted a small velvet pouch. The container displayed an imprint:

Jean Guizot, Purveyor of Fine Diamonds and Gems-Paris/Brussels/Tunis.

A small message slip extended from the mouth of the mailing pouch.

To my comrade Ethan who saved me from myself.

For a friend like no other, I offer this stone.

Look at it closely. It is a gem we describe

as peerless, a stone by which others are measured.

Please accept it as a gesture of my gratitude for

seeing me across the desert. No words can describe my

journey. Only your generosity made my passage

and my life here possible.

* *

Ethan withdrew a grape-shaped stone from the pouch.

Irina's eyes flashed. "Look, mother...it's a ruby!" Ethan raised the stone to eye level. It had been cut and faceted in such a way that light was no longer reflected from it. The stone took in the light and plunged it into infinite pools of red—red as deep as the richest arterial blood—-and when the eye lifted from this pool of perfect color, it was not the same eye.

At that moment, the afternoon sun appeared. Ethan lifted the stone to the light, as a high priest would raise his chalice. What remained of the Itzkavitz family stood beneath it. A crimson pool fell upon them, and they were left without doubt or fear.

* *

Two hundred and fifty kilometers south of Tolnici stood the ancient city of Bucharest, once the guardian of the trade routes to Constantinople and now the backdrop for political upheaval. Antonescu and Sima were struck from public memory; the Romanian Communist party was now ascendant. Rubles and kopeks began to seep into what was left of the Romanian economy. The new government declared that all transactions in _lei_ would end in 90 days. In truth, the transition took sixteen months.

Irina entered the sun room early one Saturday morning. The space was once Teodor's private study. She seated herself behind what remained of his desk. She liked the easterly exposure that made one forget the long shadow of the Carpathians.

And here was the morning mail. More resettlement notices. Rations of milk, sugar and coffee would continue until further notice. Thank you Mr. Minister of Interior.

Separate collectives were being formed for soy bean and wheat farmers. Failure to register could lead to levies on all land under cultivation. Thank you Mr. Agricultural Minister.

Ah, here was something.

The People's Provisional Government is establishing a Survivor's Registry by village.

The announcement, crafted by some distant bureaucrat, used the grand May Day hyperbole. The "magnificent promise of the peasant class" in the new era. "Agrarian reforms now leading to another proud chapter in Soviet economic development." And in case anyone had missed the full sweep of the Moscow propaganda machine, the leaflet invited all workers to unite in renouncing the fascist years and give testimony to their new lives under the hammer and sickle.

* *

Irina and Ethan shared tea each afternoon. "Who knows if this government can even get up and get dressed in the morning? No matter. Ethan, I am going to ask them to search for the remains of Teodor and Sandu. It is an honorable request. We deserve to know."

Ethan stood at the desk as Irina composed her request, the pen upright in her hand, her face tightened in concentration.

"You should write of your camp experiences as well," Ethan said at length. "Memories fade quickly."

"Not with the fatigue I'm feeling in these fingers today." She passed the pen and two sheets to Ethan. "Here—give some thought to writing your own account. Your escape and all that followed—it could serve as an inspiration to others."

Ethan said nothing, drew up the writing materials and left the room. Sometime later Irina heard the front door close and steps on the outside pathway.

* *

Volume 13 "PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE TOLNICI VILLAGE (Central Romania)" appeared two years later. Page 43 contains Ethan's account, exactly as he wrote it:

I refuse to think any longer about loss or retribution. At the end of each day my thoughts dwell on the abiding power of love and loyalty. I am refreshed too by the overriding will of the Almighty. _Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight. My goodness and my fortress; my high tower and my deliverer..._

Now I think of myself as no different from the other survivors, faceless and nameless, their leather shoes now turned to remnants along the roadside. At times, I glance at the Ludovic Road, that ribbon of stone that led to Dumanovka, on to the refugee camp at Vienna, and the jungle trail that eventually found its way to the Seven Pagodas.

More than once I have promised myself that I would never forget. But now the faces are beginning to merge, the footsteps grow softer, Teo's hand now cold in my memory.

Today I looked down the Ludovic before writing this. It is empty of all suffering. But if you listen closely, as I did, you'll realize that it echoes with the sound of footsteps. On the road are thousands of Jews, wrapped in silver and blue, their heads erect, bound for Jerusalem.

