PROLOGUE
Vranov nad Topl’ou, Slovakia
June 1929
The three sisters, Cibi, Magda and Livi, sit in a tight circle with their father in the small backyard of their home. The oleander bush their mother has tried so hard to coax back to life droops disconsolately in one corner of the small garden.
Livi, the youngest, at three years old, leaps to her feet: sitting still is not in her nature.
“Livi, please, will you sit down?” Cibi tells her. At seven years old, she is the eldest of the siblings, and it is her responsibility to chastise them when they misbehave. “You know Father wants to talk to us.”
“No,” three-year-old Livi pronounces, and proceeds to skip around the seated figures, giving each a pat on the head as she passes. Magda, the middle sister, and five years old, is using a dry twig from the oleander to draw imaginary figures in the dirt. It is a warm, sunny, summer afternoon. The back door is open, inviting in the heat, while sending the sweet smell of freshly baked bread into the garden. Two windows, one looking into the kitchen, the other into the small bedroom the family shares, have seen better days. Chips of paint litter the ground: winter has taken its toll on the cottage. The garden gate catches a gust of wind and slams. The catch is broken; yet another thing for Father to fix.
“Come here, kitten. Will you sit on my knee?” Father beckons to Livi.
Being told to do something from an older sister is one thing; but being asked, and so sweetly, by her father is quite another. Livi drops into his lap, a flailing arm smacking against the side of his head. She is oblivious to the pain her action has caused.
“Are you all right, Father?” Magda is concerned, catching the grimace on his face as his head jerked back. She brushes her fingers down his stubbly cheek.
“Yes, my darling. I am perfect. I have my girls with me—what more could a father ask for?”
“You said you wanted to talk to us?” Cibi, ever impatient, gets to the point of this little “meeting.”
Menachem Meller looks into the eyes of his pretty daughters. They have not a care in the world, innocent of the harsh realities of life outside their sweet cottage. Harsh realities which Menachem has lived through and still lives with. The bullet that didn’t kill him during the Great War remains lodged in his neck and now, twelve years later, it is threatening to finish the deed.
Fiery Cibi, tough Cibi … Menachem strokes her hair. On the day she was born she announced that the world had better watch out—she had arrived and woe betide anyone who got in her way. Her green eyes have a habit of turning a fiery yellow when her temper gets the better of her.
And Magda, beautiful, gentle Magda, how did she get to be five so fast? He worries her sweet nature will make her vulnerable to being hurt and used by others. Her big blue eyes gaze at him and he feels her love, her understanding of his precarious health. He sees in her a maturity beyond her years, a compassion she has inherited from her mother and grandmother, and a fierce desire to care for others.
Livi stops squirming as Menachem plays with her soft, curly hair. Already he has described her to their mother as the wild one, the one he worries will run with the wolves, and break like a sapling if cornered. Her piercing blue eyes and petite frame remind him of a fawn, easy to startle and ready to bolt.
Tomorrow he will have the surgery to remove the errant bullet from his neck. Why couldn’t it have just stayed where it was? He has prayed endlessly for more time with his girls. He needs to guide them into adulthood, attend their weddings, hold his grandchildren. The operation is a risky one, and if he doesn’t survive, this may be the last day he spends with them. If that is the case, however awful it is to contemplate on this glorious sunny day, then what he needs to ask of his girls, must be said now.
“Well, Father, what do you want to tell us?” Cibi prods.
“Cibi, Magda, do you know what a promise is?” he asks, slowly. He needs them to take this seriously.
Magda shakes her head: “no.”
“I think so,” says Cibi. “It’s when two people keep a secret, isn’t it?”
Menachem smiles. Cibi will always have a go, it’s what he loves most about her. “That’s close, my darling, but a promise can involve more than two people. I want this promise to be shared between the three of you. Livi is not going to understand, so I need you to keep talking to her about it, until she does.”
“I don’t understand, Father,” Magda interjects. “You’re being all confusing.”
“It’s very simple, Magda.” Menachem smiles. There is nothing that gives him as much pleasure as talking to his girls. Something catches in his chest; he must remember this moment, this sunny day, the wide eyes of his three daughters. “I want you to make a promise to me and to each other that you will always take care of your sisters. That you will always be there for one another, no matter what. That you will not allow anything to take you away from each other. Do you understand?”
Magda and Cibi nod, and Cibi asks, suddenly serious: “I do, Father, but why would someone want to take us away from each other?”
“I’m not saying anyone will, I just want you to promise me that if anyone tries to separate you, you will remember what we spoke of here today and do everything in your power not to let that happen. The three of you are stronger together, you must never forget that.” Menachem’s voice stumbles, and he clears his throat.
Cibi and Magda exchange a glance. Livi looks from sister to sister to father, knowing that something solemn has been agreed, but with little idea of what it means.
“I promise, Father,” says Magda.
“Cibi?” Menachem asks.
“I promise too, Father. I promise to look after my sisters—I won’t let anyone hurt them, you know that.”
“Yes, I do know that, my darling Cibi. This promise will become a pact between the three of you and no others. Will you tell Livi of this pact when she is old enough to understand?”
Cibi grabs Livi’s face in her hands, turning her head to look into her eyes. “Livi, say ‘promise.’ Say ‘I promise.’”
Livi studies her sister. Cibi is nodding, encouraging her to say the words.
“I pwomise,” pronounces Livi.
“Now say it to Father, say ‘I promise’ to Father,” Cibi instructs.
Livi turns to her father, her eyes dancing, the giggle in her throat threatening to explode, the warmth of his smile melting her little heart. “I pwomise, Father. Livi pwomises.”
Gathering his girls to his chest he looks over Cibi’s head and smiles at the other girl in his life, the mother of his daughters, who stands in the doorway of the house, tears glistening on her cheeks.
He has too much to lose; he has to survive.
CHAPTER 1
Vranov nad Topl’ou
March 1942
“Please tell me she’s going to be all right, I’m so worried about her,” Chaya frets, as the doctor examines her seventeen-year-old daughter.
Magda has been struggling with a fever for days.
“Yes, Mrs. Meller, Magda will be fine,” Dr. Kisely reassures her.
The tiny bedroom contains two beds: one in which Chaya sleeps with her youngest, Livi; and the other, which Magda shares with their older sister, Cibi, when she is home. A large cabinet takes up one wall, cluttered with the small, personal possessions of the four women of the house. Taking pride of place: the cut-glass perfume atomizer with its emerald green tie and tassel, and next to it a grainy photograph. A handsome man sits on a simple chair, a toddler on one knee, an older girl on the other. Another girl, older yet, stands to his left. On his right is the girls’ mother, her hand resting on her husband’s shoulder. Mother and daughters wear white lacy dresses and together they are a picture-perfect family, or, at least, they were.
When Menachem Meller died on the operating table, the bullet finally removed but the blood loss too great to survive, Chaya was left a widow and the girls fatherless. Yitzchak, Chaya’s father and the sisters’ grandfather, moved into the small cottage to offer help where he could, while Chaya’s brother, Ivan, lives in the house across from theirs.
Chaya is not alone, despite how she feels.
The heavy drapes are drawn in the bedroom, denying Magda, shivering, feverish, the brilliant spring sunshine which now peeks above the curtain rail.
“Can we talk in the other room?” Dr. Kisely takes Chaya’s arm.
Livi, cross-legged on the other bed, watches Chaya place another wet towel on Magda’s forehead.
“Stay with your sister?” her mother asks, and Livi nods.
When the adults leave the room Livi crosses to her sister’s bed and lies down beside her, proceeding to wipe the perspiration from Magda’s face with a dry flannel.
“You’re going to be OK, Magda. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Magda forces a small smile. “That’s my line. I’m your big sister, I look after you.”
“Then get better.”
Chaya and Dr. Kisely walk the few steps from the bedroom to the main room in the small house. The front door opens directly into this cozy living area, with a small kitchen area at the back.
The girls’ grandfather, Yitzchak, stands washing his hands at the sink. A trail of wood shavings has followed him from the backyard, and more lie on the faded blue felt that covers the floor. Startled, he turns, splashing water onto the floor. “What’s going on?” he asks.
“Yitzchak, I’m glad you’re here, come and sit with us,” says Dr. Kisely.
Chaya quickly turns to the young doctor, fear in her eyes. Dr. Kisely smiles and guides her to a kitchen chair, pulling another away from the small table for Yitzchak to sit.
“Is she very unwell?” Yitzchak asks.
“She’s going to be fine. It’s a fever, nothing a healthy young girl can’t recover from in her own time.”
“So what’s this about?” Chaya waves a hand between the doctor and herself.
Dr. Kisely finds another chair and sits down. “I don’t want you to be scared by what I’m about to tell you.”
Chaya merely nods, now desperate for him to tell her what he needs to say. The years since the war broke out have changed her: her once smooth brow is lined, and she is so thin her dresses hang off her like wet laundry.
“What is it, man?” Yitzchak demands. The responsibility he bears for his daughter and grandchildren has aged him beyond his years, and he has no time for intrigue.
“I want to admit Magda into hospital—”
“What? You just said she was going to get better!” Chaya explodes. She stands up, grabbing the table for support.
Dr. Kisely holds up a hand to shush her. “It’s not because she’s ill. There’s another reason I want to admit Magda and if you will listen, I’ll explain.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Yitzchak says. “Just spit it out.”
“Mrs. Meller, Yitzchak, I am hearing rumors, terrible rumors—talk of young Jews, girls and boys, being taken from Slovakia to work for the Germans. If Magda is in hospital, she will be safe, and I promise I won’t let anything happen to her.”
Chaya collapses back onto her chair, her hands covering her face. This is much worse than a fever.
Yitzchak absentmindedly pats her back, but he is focused now, intent on hearing everything the doctor has to say. “What else?” he asks, meeting the doctor’s eyes, urging him to be blunt.
“As I said, rumors and gossip, none of it good for the Jews. If they come for your children, it is the beginning of the end. And working for the Nazis? We have no idea what that means.”
“What can we do?” Yitzchak asks. “We have already lost everything—our right to work, to feed our families … What more can they take from us?”
“If what I’m hearing has any basis in fact, they want your children.”
Chaya sits up straighter. Her face is red, but she isn’t crying. “And Livi? Who will protect Livi?”
“I believe they’re after sixteen-year-olds and older. Livi is fourteen, isn’t she?”
“She’s fifteen.”
“Still a baby.” Dr. Kisely smiles. “I think Livi will be fine.”
“And how long will Magda stay in hospital?” asks Chaya. She turns to her father. “She won’t want to go, she won’t want to leave Livi. Don’t you remember, Father, when Cibi left, she made Magda promise she would look after their little sister.”
Yitzchak pats Chaya’s hands. “If we are to save her, she must leave, whether she wants to or not.”
“I think a few days, maybe a week, is all we need. If the rumors are true, it will happen soon, and afterward, I will bring her home. And Cibi? Where is she?”
“You know her, she’s off with the Hachshara.” Chaya doesn’t know what she thinks of the Hachshara, a training program to teach young people, just like Cibi, the skills necessary to make a new life in Palestine, far away from Slovakia and the war raging in Europe.
“Still learning how to till the soil?” the doctor jokes, but neither Chaya or Yitzchak are smiling.
“If she’s to emigrate, then that’s what she will find when she gets there—lots of fertile land, waiting to be planted,” says Yitzchak.
But Chaya remains silent, lost in her thoughts. One child in hospital, another young enough to escape the clutches of the Nazis. And the third, Cibi, her eldest, now part of a Zionist youth movement inspired by a mission to create a Jewish homeland, whenever that might be.
The truth has already dawned on all of them that they need a promised land right now, and the sooner the better. But, Chaya surmises, at least all three of her children are safe, for now.
Copyright © 2021 by Heather Morris
