Highlander - Donna Lettow [89]
MacLeod knelt beside him. “Maybe it’s because books and libraries don’t last forever?” He put an arm around Avram’s shoulders. “A very wise old Rebbe once told me that unless the truth is known, everything your people are, everything they were, will vanish into nothing, like the smoke from the camps. And then the Germans will have won. Maybe someone has to be left to remember them, to make sure it never happens again.”
Avram laid his head against MacLeod’s shoulder and finally allowed the tears to flow. “I tried … Oh, God, I tried so hard. And it still happened …” MacLeod could hear the anguish of a thousand years in his voice. “I couldn’t stop it.”
“It’s not your fault. You have to believe that.”
“It’s like trying to save the beach from the sea, MacLeod. For every one I think I’ve helped, I lose ten thousand more.”
“You’re not God, Avram,” MacLeod said gently. “You can’t save everyone. But if you’ve helped one person live one day, one minute longer, you’ve won. Look at how you saved Miriam.”
“Yeah, and she’s still dead,” Avram said bitterly.
“But you gave her three weeks of life that she wouldn’t have had. Remember what you told me? It’s not a curse, Avram. It’s a mitzvah.”
Avram smiled a bit. “Oh, Lord, what have I done? You’re starting to sound like a Jew, MacLeod.” Avram got to his feet, wiped his face with his arm. He took one last look around the room, at the friends and comrades who’d been his only family, who’d chosen the dignity of death by their own hands. “But you’re right. I’ll make sure no one ever forgets what happened here. As long as I live, another year or another two thousand, their sacrifice won’t be forgotten. And it will never have to happen again.”
There were still German patrols stationed at the Mila Street entrances to the malina, but the enterprising smugglers who’d designed the bunker had allowed for a back door as well, which was, for the moment, unguarded. MacLeod and Avram emerged onto Zamenhofa, cautious, weaponless. It was still dark, which would provide them some protection as they made their way back to Mendik’s base. Still, to avoid the patrols, they kept to the alleyways and building courtyards.
In a courtyard less than a block away from the carnage at Mila 18, another abomination waited. As they entered, MacLeod counted nearly fifty bodies, neatly arranged in patterns of five and six, then gunned down by firing squad. Fresh blood pooled between the paving stones like the water’s edge at ebb tide, and the stone floor was rust with a stain that would never come clean. Many of the groups were naked, ordered to strip before their execution, the clothes on their backs worth more to the Germans than their lives. Two piles of the dead closest to the entrance were still clothed and in disarray, their executioners grown tired or bored with their game or simply running out of time.
“God in Heaven,” Avram whispered. He hadn’t thought he still had the capacity to be horrified but the cold, calculated nature of the massacre and the obvious pride the murderers had taken in their work sickened him. MacLeod waved one hand to shush him.
“Listen!” From within one of the piles of corpses near the entrance, MacLeod could just make out a sound. The mewing of a cat? The crying of a child? MacLeod hurried over, Avram following. Together, they began to roll bullet-ridden bodies from the pile. Death was recent—not all of the blood had dried, and it smeared MacLeod’s hands and leather jacket as the two men worked in respectful silence.
Suddenly, a scream! And from out of the pile, a bloody hand buried a knife through the leather and deep into MacLeod’s forearm. Surprised, he pulled back, freeing the blade from his flesh, and the knife came after him again. This time, he was able to grab the arm wielding the blade and haul the wielder out from beneath the corpses.
Screaming, crying, covered in blood, Rivka fought like a wildcat to free herself. “Let me go, you bastard!” She flailed with the knife, kicking and clawing.
“Rivka, stop! It’s me,