ATHOTS Chapter One

 Rachel was young and life was good.

At fifteen years old, she sensed the tension growing around her, knew something of the danger that was creeping slowly like black storm clouds over her country and her family... but she didn't understand. 

Some books were burned, some windows broken, disturbing things were heard on the radio and read in the newspaper...

But it had not come yet. Not completely. 

All she knew was that the man who called himself Fuhrer und Reichskanzler... Adolf Hitler by name... was dangerous. And she knew that someday her family might have to leave Germany. But for now, all seemed all right. Just a bit of trouble. A few nasty words painted on the window of her father's shop, and her mother had been made to sew a yellow star on each of their coats.

But it would be alright, wouldn't it? 

Rachel was afraid, of course... but her faith was strong and her heart was innocent. The German people were good people, were they not? They had always been kind to her family... and she was German too, after all. Someday this trouble would pass, they would take the yellow Star of David off their coats, no more windows would be broken, and there would be no more talk of war.

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Rachel was fifteen when she met Isaac Cohen. He became assistant at Adler's Fine Watches as a lanky, seventeen year old boy with a thatch of thick black hair and eyes that made Rachel think of melted chocolate. He moved into the little apartment over the shop and took his meals at the Adlers' house across the street, three times a day, without fail. On Sabbaths, he would walk the four blocks to the beautiful Dusseldorf Synagogue with them to kneel in prayer.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind... Isaac and Rachel were in love. Her mother knew it from the moment the two were introduced, from the way Isaac's eyes shone as he smiled, and the way the blood rose in Rachel's cheeks, spreading a rosy flush over her face. Her father knew it when Rachel came to the shop with a basket of apple strudel and cinnamon buns, and Isaac jumped up from his workbench, knocking things over in his eagerness to open the door for her. And Rachel's sisters, Rebekah and Rishona, knew it when they teased her and she hid her face so they wouldn't see her revealing smile. But they guessed it was there anyway.

Rebekah and Rishona... Bekah and Shonie, they were called... were only babies then. Bekah was six and Shonie was four, and they knew even less about the coming trouble than their older sister. They were a rowdy little duo who, in spite of their lacy dresses and tea parties and fluffy pet kittens, could be rather rough and tumble at times.

They loved Isaac too. Their favorite time of day... it was everyone's favorite time, really... was the evening. Supper would be over and cleared away, and their father would get out his pipe and a book. He never read the newspaper at home these days... the look in his eyes when he read it frightened his family, so he kept the papers at the shop. He would take down Arabian Nights or Innocents Abroad or The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh or some other such thrilling tale, and read aloud. Rachel would sit beside her mother on the settee, with sewing or drawing, and listen with wide eyes. Isaac and the girls would sit on the floor, sometimes listening, but usually frolicking in the most ridiculous manner. The little girls discovered right off that Isaac made an excellent horse and he would obligingly crawl all over the family room with the both of them on his back. And sometimes they would act out bits of the story right there on the living room carpet, once their father was finished with his reading.

Rachel had always liked Isaac, but it wasn't until a warm and starlit summer's night when she was sixteen that she knew she loved him. Supper was over and the reading done for the night, Bekah and Shonie had been tucked in bed (carried upstairs on Isaac's shoulders, after much protesting and insisting on their parts) and Isaac was headed back to his apartment across the street.

Rachel followed him out onto the front steps to wave good night. He had started across, into the street, when suddenly he doubled back. He ran until he stood right in front of her, and he just stood in silence for a long, long moment, as if working up his courage for something.

Rachel held her breath, her eyes lowered... and she waited. Waited until he bent forward and pressed his lips to her forehead. When she dared to look up again, he was gone. She stood out under the stars until her mother came looking for her, staring across the street at Isaac's window with a dreamy smile on her face and a feeling of pure joy beating fast in her young heart.