Free The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen Page B

a
bissel
uncomfortable.”
    â€œUncomfortable! They took my wedding ring. They kicked my Avrom in the nose. Uncomfortable!” It was a third woman.
    â€œIt is just a story,” the first woman said. “A nightmare. Do not tell us any more of your awful stories.”
    The man coughed again, then said, “Is it not written that we must bear witness?”
    â€œWhat witness?” Fayge cried. “Were you there? It is only gossip. Vicious, cruel gossip. Rumors. Shmuel, tell him it is only that.”
    Shmuel was silent.
    â€œNot gossip, Fayge. It’s true. I know . . . ,” Hannah said.
    Gitl pinched her above the shoulder to silence her.
    The man spoke again. “The one who told me was a distant cousin. He knew someone who escaped.”
    â€œYou said no one escaped,” Fayge put in.
    â€œHush,” a woman near Hannah said. “The children will hear you and be afraid.”
    â€œI heard . . . ,” another man began. Hannah recognizedYitzchak’s voice. “I heard another story when I was in Liansk buying poultry. There was a doctor, a fine man, very educated. He was operating in the hospital on a Christian woman. She trusted him more than her own, you see. And right in the middle of the operation, because her husband had called them in, the soldiers came and dragged the doctor away and killed him. With his own instruments. In front of his family.”
    â€œDid the woman die? The shikse he was operating on?” another man asked.
    â€œI hope so,” a light voice chorused.
    â€œNo,” Yitzchak said. “She did not die. And she did not deserve to die.”
    â€œPerhaps
she
did not,” Gitl said. “But her husband did. And the soldiers. Monsters.”
    â€œHush,” the woman near Hannah said again. “The children will hear you.”
    The rabbi cleared his throat loudly. “These are just rumors and gossip. The proverbs say ‘He who harps on a matter alienates his friend.’”
    â€œWell, I heard”—a man’s voice came from the back of the car. He spoke so softly at first that the people near him shushed the others so he might be heard. “I heard, and reliably, too, that in a town on the border of Poland, the entire population was locked
in
the synagogue. And then the Nazis set fire to the building. Anyone trying to jump out the windows was shot. Only there was a Pole, a good man, the
Shabbos goy
, who opened the back door, so a few of the villagers escaped and were hidden by the
Shabbos goy
in his own house.In his own house! I had a friend who was one of the seven who got out. He told me the smell of people burning is not unlike the smell of cooking pigs.”
    â€œHah!” said Gitl. “And how does he—a good Jew—know what pigs smell like cooking?”
    â€œSo—so he was not kosher. Or the
Shabbos goy
told him.”
    â€œSo!”
    â€œHow can you joke about such things?” Hannah said in a very small voice.
    Gitl made a
tching
sound with her tongue. “If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?”
    â€œHush,” the woman near Hannah remarked again, “the children.”
    â€œWe could break down the doors and run away,” Hannah said.
    â€œRun away? Where, little Chaya? To Lublin?” Gitl asked.
    â€œTo America,” Hannah said.
    â€œTo be with Avrom Morowitz?
This
is my home.”
    â€œThis boxcar?” Hannah whispered.
    â€œDo not be impudent.”
    â€œTo Israel then.”
    Gitl laughed, a strange, hollow sound. “And where is Israel,” she asked, “except in our prayers?”
    â€œHush,” the woman begged.
    The stories continued.
    â€œDid you hear about Mostochowa?” a man asked.
    â€œYou mean