It was almost December, and snow had fallen heavily and settled. In the street it was thick and discoloured, and piled up like ploughed mud. Rosa had long confessed to me that she was married to her unshaven friend in dirty worn clothes, but that was all she told me. She opened and closed her confession in a single sentence. He is my husband. As I huddled in bed, and imagined the fearsome wind in some distant place stripping the remaining leaves from trees, I realized that these days I heard the pounding of his feet less frequently. I was disappointed, for I had become accustomed to his winking at me conspiratorially before he disappeared into Rosa's room. And then one afternoon, as the snow began to fall again, and while I stood on the crate wearing cap, scarf and gloves, I asked Rosa without turning to face her.
'Why does your husband not live with us?'
She did not answer. For a few moments, I was too nervous to turn around and face her. When I eventually did turn, she was smiling sadly.
'I told you, he's fighting on the outside.'
'He lives on the outside?'
She nodded.
'But he could get you out. You could live on the outside too. Both of you.'
'Yes,' said Rosa. 'That is possible, but then he would have difficulty visiting me.'
That evening, I dared to raise the name of my friend Rosa with my parents. Mama looked up at me and shook her head slowly and with resignation.
'She should forget him and live among her own kind. With them, she has a chance of a life.'
Papa looked across at his wife.
Spring arrived. It ceased snowing. In our streets birds did not sing, or trees bud, or flowers bloom. There were rumours that, within the year, we would be taken to the east. That the streets and houses would be emptied. And in the east? Work, of course. We would be required to labour like farm animals until we dropped. I had begun to question Rosa openly about her husband who seemed to be neglecting her. Three months had passed since his last visit. Had he gone away? Rosa simply smiled and shook her head.
'But why does he want to fight? Does he not see that it is hopeless?'
'It is not hopeless,' snapped Rosa. 'If we do not fight, then we have lost.'
(We? Always we. Rosa and her 'we'.)
'But we have already lost, Rosa. They are everywhere.'
I paused, for my friend was staring at me with a pained expression. I softened my tone.
'I'm sorry.'
'Eva, we have not lost. And I cannot go to him. I am a wife, so I must be where he can visit me.'
'But with us you are in danger, Rosa.'
'But with him I am in danger. It's all the same.'
'But you can save yourself. If they come in the night, there will be no time for explanations.'
For a moment there was silence. And then Rosa took my hand.
'Eva, I have made my choice. I have no regrets. Truly, no regrets.'
It was a long hot summer that second year, and the heat served only to increase the stench and the sadness. People continued to fall dead in the street from starvation, but an increasingly common practice was the taking of one's own life, and that of one's family. Jumping from a high window was a popular individual method, while rat poison administered to food was a common way of dispatching a household at one sitting. By utilizing these and other procedures, one remained master of life and death. A precious gift. Mama fell ill, so it was now Papa alone who left on the daily search for food. Rosa and I would sit together in the kitchen, the heat dripping from our bodies, talking and mopping our brows, while Mama lay alone in the cool darkness of her room. And then one day, Papa came home early, and he told Rosa and I that he had seen a girl of about my own age throw herself in front of a military vehicle. Papa's jacket was stained with blood. The horror of this girl's suicide had struck Papa a heavy blow. He waited a few minutes. Then he calmly told us that today he had also seen the son of a fellow doctor begging with open palms. Again, he waited a few moments, then he looked from Rosa to his daughter, then back again to Rosa.
'Some among us are behaving like animals. But we are human beings.'
And then he lowered his eyes. Papa's heavily fortified personality lay in ruins.
'It is written in the Holy Books,' he began, 'that a time will come when the living shall envy the dead.'
The summer heat gave way to grey skies, and then the freezing chill of a second winter. By now I had lost interest in my studies, although I occasionally still sought refuge in my books. An ailing Mama simply languished in bed and waited for her husband to return. One morning, she called me in to her bedside. With her stiffened fingers she touched my threadbare dress, and then, in a feverish voice, she began to try to explain the pain that she felt at not being able to buy clothes for daughters who were growing tall.
'I remember, you girls used to love to look at yourselves in the mirror. You used to try different hairdos, and secretly put on my make-up, and my jewellery, and my clothes. But of course, I knew. Neither of you could ever put anything back in the right place.'
Then Mama suddenly stopped, her face knotting before my eyes into a painful grimace. She turned from me. I left Mama and went into my cold room and locked the door. I sobbed all night. And then, in the morning, I began to keep a journal, but within a week I gave it up, for I could no longer summon the energy to maintain the daily pretence that I was writing to my sister.
I saw less of my friend Rosa. When I did see her, she seemed to be physically shrinking as the days became shorter. If her aspect could be used as a barometer of our general condition, then we were thoroughly exhausted. Out in the streets, the hostile noises and barked orders had begun to grow even louder. One morning, I looked through the high kitchen window as the bulky sewage wagon rumbled by. These days, it was pulled by men who were wrapped like mummies. The fresh snow and weak grey light made these thin figures appear ghostly, a state to which they would soon be reduced. There was no longer water in the standpipes, so people cleaned themselves in snow. And there were no tools to bury the dead in this frozen earth, so it was now acceptable for people to simply lie where they fell. By the time the spring arrived, we knew that our streets would soon be sealed. It was over. We were to be sent away on the trains, for we were needed elsewhere. The rumour was that, by the end of the spring, the whole district would be reduced to rubble. I wanted to discuss this with Rosa, but after the long hot summer I seldom saw her. My friend's increasingly reclusive behaviour, and her obvious physical decline on the few occasions that I did glimpse her, disturbed me greatly. I could not understand what was happening to her.
Towards the end of the summer, I had sat with Rosa in the kitchen and told her about Margot. About her being in hiding. About my sister, who was a year older than I, and who looked like them. (Apparently, according to Mama, I bore the stamp of Jerusalem.) I asked Rosa that if, by any chance, she should change her mind and decide to leave, would she please find my sister and be sure to tell her that Eva loves her and is thinking about her. Rosa clasped her bony hands around mine and whispered, 'Of course.' And the longer I talked to Rosa, the more I found myself speaking to her as though her leaving were inevitable, her discovery of Margot only a matter of time, her reclamation of her old life a certainty. Yet Rosa said nothing further. She simply listened as I retold tales of Margot's escapades, and of how I was sure that my sister was harbouring a boyfriend named Peter, and I talked on until I noticed the sad smile on Rosa's face. And then I fell silent in embarrassment. And then again, Rosa squeezed my hands between her own. 'Don't worry,' she whispered. 'It will be all right.'