I wake early to a dream – about the Holocaust of
course. I need to find out what is happening to Joshua, it’s killing me. I
couldn’t see how someone as cute as Dalia could die like that for no reason.
Joshua had to find a cure. He had to love her enough. He just has too…
March 19TH, 1942
I have been far too busy to write for the past few days. But is it ever
really all that different? All of this, with the work and deprivation and dying
(Adina’s mother died of typhus the other day, and one of the children in our
room was shot mercilessly and hung in the streets for all to see: don’t cause
trouble, we are the authority, and the kid knew that and still got shot).
Yet, I can’t do this anymore. There is something to write. Dalia.
I can’t keep pretending that she’s not getting worse. She coughs (her coughs are
frightening, I swear she might cough the insides of her lungs out) up rusty colored sputum and now
speaks no more than a whisper if she’s lucky. She is also extremely thin in
spite of her loss of appetite
and her immune system’s effort to rid the illness. She has lost the bright look
in her brilliant blue eyes; which are now a shady gray. Her hair is also a
rusty color and I can see her ribcage through her shirt. And she looks at me
with the saddest, thinnest face…
They are taking more people away now. In cattle cars. There are few of
us left now. They also seem to be sorting the weak from the strong. I might
make it to the stronger half, but Dalia wouldn’t stand a chance.
I knew that there was penicillin,
which is what the antibiotic was made of, out there somewhere, the
Germans must have hoarded it all for our army and left us nothing. I had to
find her the cure even if it meant my life.
I leave for my job early, not wanting to see Dalia’s sad face looking up
at me, making me remember her former happy self. I am walking down the street
when I run into Adina. The space under her eyes is a deep purple from grieving.
“Hey,” I say to her. There isn’t much to say.
“Hi,” she replies, quietly, “I… heard about your sister.”
Adina seems to be thinking hard, “Joshua, I need to tell you something…
and it’s something you might like… or not. I don’t know.”
Where on Earth did this come from? “Okay… what is…”
She cuts me off and drags me down an alley. It’s a good thing I left for
work early because if we were going to talk, this might take a while.
“Okay… so look… I’m dating… a German soldier.”
I widen my eyes, “Adina, what the hell???!!!!” I shout. She clasps her
hand over my mouth.
“Look, you need to shut up about this, okay? Friedrich… the German
soldier, we would get into a lot of trouble if this got out… You are pretty
lucky for me to tell you this because I made a promise and I’m doing you a huge
favor.”
“How in the world would knowledge of your love life help Dalia?” I ask,
clearly angered.
She isn’t offended, just impatient, “Are you, like, stupid? How do you
not see it? Friedrich is a Nazi, therefore he has access to Nazi technology,
which, at this point would include penicillin. And since I care about you, and
he cares about me, he could probably get it in a couple of days, though it wouldn’t
be easy.”
The puzzle pieces all fit together now. This might work… it had to.
“So talk to you then,” she says hastily and then leaves me in the gray
alley. It is very cold and I shiver under my thin layer of clothes. A few
flakes fall to the ground and soon a whole layer covers the frost-bitten
ground. Slowly, I make my way to work through the deteriorating street.
I have a quiz you can take if you want here. All of this information has been put in this blog, but some questions are tricky....
I have a quiz you can take if you want here. All of this information has been put in this blog, but some questions are tricky....
No comments:
Post a Comment