Free Day After Night by Anita Diamant

shame.”
    Leonie said nothing but she wondered whether Aliza might have misjudged the situation.
     Bryce was obviously in love with her. Danny was fond of him. As for Tirzah? Leonie
     guessed and thought, Poor woman.

II September

Rosh Hashanah, September 7
    Tirzah had let it be known that the evening meal that started the Jewish New Year
     would be special, so speculation about the menu had become a topic of discussion and
     debate.
    “There is a big argument about the proper ingredients for carrot tzimmes,” said Shayndel
     as she reached for another potato from the mountain before her.
    Tirzah, who was chopping a bowl of onions, made no reply.
    “I think there’s even a wager about whether there will be sweet or savory noodle kugel.”
    Shayndel thought she heard Tirzah laugh. “What?” she asked. But the cook only continued
     chopping.
    Usually, Shayndel didn’t mind Tirzah’s reserve. In the three weeks since she’d begun
     working in the kitchen, she had found it a relief to spend time with someone who did
     not treat her withkid gloves. After David told the men in his barrack that she had been a partisan fighter,
     everyone except Leonie had stopped acting normal around her—no more joking or gossiping
     now that she was considered a champion of the resistance, a heroine of the Jewish
     people.
    The tales of her exploits got grander with every retelling: she was said to have single-handedly
     killed a dozen Nazi soldiers in a machine-gun bunker; she had walked into a Polish
     police station in broad daylight to steal identity papers; she had rescued scores
     of families moments before the Germans had come to arrest them.
    There was some truth to all of the stories—especially the one about the police station
     theft—but there were holes in them, too. She had been too stubborn to admit that she
     couldn’t throw as far as the boys, and tossed the hand grenade so badly that Wolfe
     had put himself in the line of fire to retrieve it and pitch it into the gunner’s
     nest. Still mortified by that fiasco, which had nearly cost all of them their lives,
     she refused to talk about any of her wartime experiences. But her reticence was taken
     as a proof of modesty, which made her stock rise even higher.
    Shayndel began to spend more time in the kitchen, where she could count on Tirzah
     to be as curt and bracing as horseradish. The room was narrow and cramped. There was
     a large army cookstove and piles of battered, burned pots and pans—enough to accommodate
     the Jewish laws that separate meat and dairy. The sink was far too small for all of
     the washing-up. Tirzah kept the space as clear and uncluttered as possible, without
     so much as a stool that might tempt a person to sit down and linger over a mug of
     tea.
    Shayndel worked hard in the kitchen, chopping andwashing, but wished she could do more as Tirzah’s agent in Atlit. Occasionally the
     cook inquired about a new arrival, but mostly Tirzah wanted details about the guards:
     which men slept on duty and which were easily bribed, who had a wife and children
     at home, who was smitten by which of the Atlit girls.
    Shayndel was to report any changes in any of their schedules. She learned all the
     guards’ names and was surprised to find out that not all of the Arabs were Muslims;
     several were Christians. But it had been two weeks since she learned anything new.
     Her “spying” became as routine as clearing tables and sweeping the floors, and she
     wished Tirzah would confide in her about what other kind of information the Palmach
     was looking for; maybe then she could be more useful.
    Shayndel sighed as she picked up another potato, wishing she had some shocking morsel
     of news that would jolt Tirzah into conversation. But even the gossip from the barrack
     was stale. Traffic into Atlit had slowed to a trickle, which had prompted Arik to
     spend a good part of his last Hebrew class complaining that the Mossad Le’aliyah Bet—the