Free The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen Page A

in!” a woman screamed. “My God, we’ll suffocate.”
    Everyone began to scream then, Hannah with them. The ones by the door hammered on it with their fists, the car rocking with their efforts, but it did no good. No one came to open the door. After a while, exhausted by all the screaming and the tears, they stopped.
    It was pretty dark inside the car, with only small patches of light where the boards did not quite fit together. And it was airless. And hot. One of the twowomen directly behind Hannah smelled of garlic. Somewhere a child cried out that she had to go to the bathroom. A little while later, a smell announced that she had.
    â€œHow long?” someone called out.
    The rabbi’s voice replied calmly, “We are in God’s hands now.”
    â€œGod’s hands are very hot and sweaty,” Gitl said.
    â€œHow can you say such a thing?” It was Fayge.
    Just then the car shook and everybody screamed.
    â€œI hear a train,” Hannah cried out. She bent her good knee again and looked through the crack. A dark engine was coming down the track, backing toward them. “I see it.”
    â€œGod’s hands, my children,” the rabbi said loudly.
    As the engine bumped against the two cars, shaking them and making it hard to stand, Hannah managed to twist just enough to speak directly to the rabbi. “Please, Rabbi,” she pleaded, “we must
do
something. And quickly. I know where they’re taking us. I am . . . I am . . . from the future.
Please
.”
    Rabbi Boruch cleared his voice before speaking. “All children are from the future. I am from the past. And the past tells us what we must do in the future. That is why adults do the teaching and children the learning. So you must listen to me when I tell you that what we must do now is pray. Pray, for we are all in God’s hands.”

    Gitl was right, Hannah thought. God’s hands were very hot and sweaty. The stench in the crowded boxcar wasoverwhelming, a powerful stew of human perspiration and fear and the smell of children being sick. As the train clacketed along the tracks, Hannah thought how lucky she was to be near a pocket of fresh air. Most of the others were not so fortunate.
    For the longest time, no one spoke. But after an hour, the silence was too depressing and voices volunteered what comfort they could.
    â€œI can see a little bit,” a man near the door said. “We are passing a town. Now I see peasants in the field.”
    Spontaneously several voices cried out, “Help! Help us!”
    â€œAny reaction?” Yitzchak asked.
    â€œYes. They ran their fingers across their throats.”
    â€œThe bastards. Do they care nothing?” a woman asked.
    Shmuel answered, “Did they ever?”
    A man with a deep, rough voice spoke. “I hear there was another shtetl taken to a railroad station somewhere in Russia.”
    â€œWhy resettle Russian Jews? Russia is not big enough for all?”
    â€œBig enough so a story could get lost there. So tell us,
where
in Russia?” Gitl said.
    â€œWho knows where?” the man called out. “What does the
where
matter? The shtetl is no longer there anyway. But wherever it was, the villagers were made to lie down in trenches, like herring, head to foot. And then, Lord God, they were slaughtered as they lay there, by soldiers with machine guns. Lime was put on top of them when they were still warm and the next ones weremade to lie down on top of that. Six times they made herrings. Six times. Until they were all dead.”
    A woman, her voice edged with hysteria, said, “You heard, you heard, but if they were all dead, how could anyone know for sure?”
    The man coughed, and continued without answering her, “When they made us lie down, I remembered what I had heard.”
    Another woman said, “But they did not kill us. Just made us