ATHOTS Chapter Five

That night, Isaac held Rachel while she cried. 

They had passed the Dusseldorf Synagogue on the way out of the city... and it had been in flames. Once again, Isaac had to drag Rachel away.

And now they were outside of the city, and too tired to go any farther. Solingen was at least a two days' walk away. They could not take the train, they could not even risk being seen in daylight. 

Rachel didn't know when she stopped crying. She simply ran out of tears... and then she felt so numb she couldn't even think. It was good to walk, good to be tired, good to feel the cold and the hunger on that two days' walk to Solingen.

And then she had her sisters in her arms again and she somehow found even more tears inside of herself.

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A kind of happiness returned to Rachel's life... for a time. They were with a kind family and in a place that was... almost... safe. There was a trapdoor beneath the couch in the living room and a tiny cellar beneath. All belongings that they did not wear on their backs were kept in that cellar.

And on nights when Nazi boots thundered through the streets of Solingen, Rachel and Isaac and Rebekah and Rishona huddled together in silence in the dark, dank little hole of the cellar, hardly daring to breathe.

The slow, dark days turned into weeks, and somehow became months... and the months began to pass almost pleasantly. In the evenings, Isaac would read aloud while the others gathered round, listening with wide eyes. There was little acting now... but sometimes Rebekah would repeat something Isaac read, with a dramatic flair, and poke Shonie until she giggled. 

The family they stayed with... the Obermanns... owned a small butcher shop on the main street of Solingen. And they had a seventeen year old son, Rudolf, who would one day inherit the shop. But the Nazis knocked on the door... and while the Jews hid, trembling beneath the floor of the Obermanns' home... they found that this time, they were not what the Nazis wanted. It was Rudolf.

And he was taken away... taken to be a Nazi. They prayed for him that night, and every night after that.

Winter passed and another one came... and that was the winter that Rachel learned something. Something that in any other place and lifetime would have brought more joy than she could imagine. But something that in the life she was living now brought her more fear and worry than anything else.

She told them at supper one night. Her voice faltered, and she scarcely dared to look anyone in the eyes. Least of all Isaac. 

"I am... going to... have a baby..." her voice dropped to a whisper and she stopped talking. Everyone else stopped eating. Isaac reached for her hand and held it tight, but still she did not look at him. 

They were all thinking the same thing. What kind of life... what kind of world was this... to bring a baby into?