Page 71 of Protecting the Flame

“It wouldn’t be the first time. A Special Forces guy was arrested down at Elgin in Florida for the same thing. This was back in October. They got him with ninety pounds of cocaine. You’re talking a street value of several million, and they think this is only the tip of the iceberg because the Special Forces guy was part of a unit involved in counter-drug operations in Mexico and South America.”

“Where did your source think this smuggling ring operated out of?”

“Idaho, mostly. Big ring in Boise, but Wyoming, too, like Burke’s people. Both are perfect because you’ve got all this land and no people to speak of.”

“And you think Ben’s CO had your husband murdered because he got too close?”

She nodded. “He told me the higher-ups had investigated and found there was nothing there. Ben killed himself, and I needed to accept that.”

“But you obviously don’t.”

“I…I think it’s hard to know. Undercover work is…”

He interrupted. “Is that why you tried to kill yourself?” When she nodded, he said, “Not because of the baby?”

“God, no.” Despair washed through her veins. “I thought that maybe Ben’s CO might be right. That kind of work can swallow you up.” In the month leading to his death, Ben had become moodier and more withdrawn. “So, there are days when I think, yeah, he took his service weapon and blew his brains out all over our bathroom. Then, there are others when I think whoever was pulling the strings on this operation, whether it was his CO or someone else, caught up with him because there are my parents, too, dying in that car crash. You can say coincidence, sure. But that happened when I started making noise. Except I can’t prove anything. My tip is only a tip, that sergeant is sure as hell not going to talk to me anymore, and everything Ben did was classified. Anything I know is in my head. There’s my sister and her children, too. I can’t risk it. I have to let it go.” Not to mention the fact that she was now responsible for yet another life, a child Ben and she had talked of having, eventually. She thought of Mattie and her rage at her mother for carrying a baby Mattie’s father had wanted. Emma wasn’t all that different from Rachel.

“So, what are you going to do? Leave the military?”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that, but to do what? I’m a journalist. Newspapers are dying. Eking out a living as a stringer isn’t appealing. Besides, do you know how hard it is for a single mother, in general? The world’s a pretty messed up place, Will, and right now, with climate change and right-wing governments, and all the rest, it feels as if it’s only getting worse. Who in their right mind brings a baby into a world like this?”

“I suspect people have been asking that question for generations.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” She debated then said, “My grandmother had a sister, Klara. She went back to Poland in the early thirties.”

“That sounds like incredibly bad timing.”

“How about the worst? She met a man named Robert. They got married and settled down.”

“Where?”

“Warsaw.”

She heard his intake of breath. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “They were in the ghetto?”

She nodded. “He ran a newspaper. She liked books and wanted to be a writer. They joined up with this secret underground research organization, the Oyneg Shabes.”

“Joy of the Sabbath. Interesting name.”

“The group used to meet after Shabbos services to talk about that week’s work, but Sarah once said it was because, on Shabbos, you’ve lit candles, you’ve welcomed the Sabbath Queen, and, if you’re really orthodox, you believe the lights to the gates of the Torah are open and you’re that much closer to God. She thought they ought to have called themselves ‘Protectors of the Flame.’” That made her think of Earl and what he’d said about Inuit women.

“Did they call themselves that?”

“No. They said they were ‘The Librarians.’ They made it their mission to document everything about life in the ghetto, so we’re talking gathering and publishing books, memoirs, letters, poetry. They even kept train tickets and candy wrappers. They wanted to make sure people knew who they’d been, but they were also worried of being discovered so a lot of it was done piecemeal, like in cells? That way, if anyone was caught, they couldn’t give up the whole show. My grandmother’s sister ran a soup kitchen, a folkskikh. It was the real deal, but it was also a good cover for passing documents back and forth. When things got really bad, right before the ghetto uprising in 1943, they buried it all. No one found any of the materials until 1946, but the archive still exists. It’s in New York now.”

“What happened to them? To Klara and Robert?”

This was something she’d only told Ben. “The Uprising and then Treblinka happened. Well, that is, Treblinka happened to Robert. After the Uprising, Klara got sent to a labor camp. She knew she was pregnant when the Nazis emptied the ghetto. She’d been this close to having an abortion, but either she dithered too long or there was no time…I don’t really know. All I do know is if she’d been showing, they’d probably have killed her right there and then. There were doctors in some camps—most of them were doing abortions, of course—but there were also a couple of midwives. For whatever reason, some women were allowed to come to term, which was pretty cruel because they would kill the babies right away. But my bubbe said, my grandmother Sarah?”

“I know what a bubbe is.” He showed a faint smile. “My grandfather always said, Oyb di bobe volt gehat a bord, volt zi geven a zeyde.”

“Oooh.” She knew what that meant. If Grandma had a beard, she’d be Grandpa. “Nice guy.”

He gave his silent dog’s laugh. “He had his moments. Great accent, though.”

“Where did your family come from?”

“England, believe or not. My great-grandfather had a tea shop, the first in Whitechapel and then a second, much bigger and swankier place in Hampstead. The family apocrypha’s that he met Freud.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Scout’s honor. This happened a couple months after Freud escaped from Germany. So the story goes that Freud invited Virginia and Leonard Woolf for tea, but they needed cakes because their baker fell through at the last second or something and everyone knows that tea is about the cakes and sandwiches. Is it true?” He shrugged. “Virginia Woolf noted the tea in her diary. So, it’s not impossible. But we’re not talking about me. What happened with Klara?”

“Sarah thought Klara was allowed to come to term because she didn’t fit the stereotype of a Jew. She was this gorgeous blue-eyed, blond-haired, very Aryan-looking woman. Right around that time, some camps would take Jewish babies from mothers who could easily pass and gave them to Nazis to raise as their own. The program was called Lebensborn. That’s what happened with Klara’s little girl. They took the baby and, even though Klara survived, she never saw that child again. She looked, too. For years.”

She fell silent. For a few heartbeats, they simply stood together, hand in hand, and there was nothing but the hollow moan of wind through trees, a whump as heavy snow slid from a bough. Then, Will said, quietly, “Why did you tell me that?”

“Because.” She breathed out, watching as the wind carried the word away. “I think of Klara, despite everything, having that baby in the worst possible conditions, and yet she still came out the other side, and I can’t figure out what the bigger miracle: that she lived or her baby did. And then here I am, and I’ve made a mess of things.”

“No, you haven’t,” Will said. “You’ve helped make a life.”

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