Sunlight's Shadow

Prologue

To die, to sleep,

No more; and by sleep say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wisht. To die – to sleep –

To sleep! Perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

William Shakespeare

--(0)--

Itzak Baldyga's centre of balance lulled with the motion of the car. His feet shuffled a little wider, resisting the drag of gravity as the train listed through a bend in the track. His hands tucked into his coat sleeves, vainly attempting to warm themselves against his forearms, yet only serving to pull the heat from there and turn it into nothing. It was as though warmth was banned in the swaying cars, seeping through to the front of the train, where the SS sat in comfort and warmth, soaking up the misery of the people behind them and drinking it down with shots of brandy.

"It is God's plan," one of his comrades affirmed to the others, nodding his head in his certainty. "It's a test of our faith. God is looking for the best of us." The man rubbed his hands together a little more vigorously, as though the action would validate his words and make him ready to successfully complete the task. Baldyga said nothing. It would help no-one if he voiced his own belief that God had forsaken them all.

"I heard that they are moving us on to a colony."

Baldyga turned half an attentive ear to the new theory.

"A colony? Where?" Eagerness now, clutching to the new idea like a promise.

"Beyond the German state, away from the new empire. Exclusively for Jews."

If that was true, Baldyga thought to himself, then we would be going to Israel.

"But I'm a German," one man claimed, his protest billowing from his lips to disappear in a fine mist. "My place is in Germany, in my shop, not some colony on a spit of land no man wants to claim."

"Tell that to the SS," his friend scoffed. "See if they listen, and then come back and tell us the result!" A rumble of laughter met the remark in the air between them and danced with it for a moment.

"Anyway, you're not a German, you're a Jew."

"No, I'm a German-Jew."

"Not any more, you're not. Where have you been these past years, Letzg?"

"Asleep!" someone jibed. Another run of laughter. Baldyga remembered fleetingly the little shop Letzg had had. Shoes, he recalled. And there was the image of the slightly older man nestled in the memory, slumped behind the counter and shrouded in snores.

The wind whistled through the slats of the cattle car, screaming over every inch of bare skin, through every partially parted cloth. The company wrapped themselves tighter, huddling and showing their backs to the blasts of cold, as if doing so could fend it off. In truth, nothing could fend off the cold, in either respect. Unwelcome was all Baldyga could glean from the little sense he had managed to make from the past few years. You can be anywhere but here. But the problem, Baldyga knew, was that there was not even an anywhere for them. Not any more.

Silence for a time, each man contemplating the possibility of a colony, and daring himself to believe in such a gleaming idea that was so heavily contradicted by the cattle car they travelled in. Then the silence was ruptured with a very different theory. "I heard the Germans have extermination bases."

Silence again, only this time it was stunned, an animal knocked down. Surprised eyes pinned the speaker, and he shuffled under their stare, but did not turn away. A man to Baldyga's right eventually shrugged off the heavy weight of shock from his shoulders. "Don't be a fool," he scoffed, straightening his back and fixing the other with a condemning eye. "They wouldn't do that. This is 1941, not the Dark Ages! Think of the cost!"

Baldyga's brow shrugged at the man's belief that economy alone could be a reason against mass murder.

"And besides," the man continued, "they need us for the war effort. Who will make the shells, the pots, the uniforms?"

"The women."

Silence again.

"That is what the English are doing."

"What?" Slight panic now. "Killing the Jews?"

"What-? No, you idiot! Working their women in the factories!"

One of the others suddenly started to laugh, an unsure, lonely sound that was not joined by any one else. "It cannot be true. It can't! Poldek is right, listen to him. They couldn't get rid of us, think of the impracticalities." Again, that theory of inconvenience. "It's a story to frighten the boys. Nothing more than that. We are all fools for even allowing it thought."

A murmur of agreement rang through them, but it was unsure of itself.

Such rumours always manage to take some form of truth when fear lays open a man's soul, leaving bare all of his darkest places and offering him no solace. As such, the men surrounding Rabbi Schmidt hoped to discover some hiding place behind the older man's words as he sought to offer them comfort from the Torah. But Itzak Baldyga struggled to uncover the power behind the teachings. He could not bear to take to heart the preachings of a man whose eyes were so very lost.

"But look at us." The words piled out of a short and balding man, his fright and damning belief in the darkest of the rumours drawing his face. "We are, none of us, young men!"

"He is a young man."

The group shuffled as one to look at the 'young man'. There was indeed a younger man, a much younger man. He was not of them, this man; he was thin, but in compliance with his build, not through meagre diet. His clothes were nothing like the tattered shadows the other men wore. He was certainly not Jewish, not with that hairstyle. But the real difference, the really prominent difference, was that he was chained. Heavy shackles held his wrists up from his body, elevating them from his lap as his body sloped into the dirty corner. He leaned his forehead into the wood, paying absolutely no heed to their conversation, or their mention of him and sudden attention. But Baldyga also noted, with concern, his too-white skin, visible in the dank light and from all the way at the other end of the car. And his eyes, he thought, belong to a broken man.

The first time he had seen him was some hours ago, a fleeting glimpse from his line, a streaking outline of a man, chased by blackness and guns. He had gotten on the wrong side of Lieutenant Hermann. No-one got on the wrong side of Lieutenant Hermann… And then he had been here, unconscious at first, then awake and distant. No struggle against the chains, no hand to the split skin at his temple. Nothing. Broken.

"He is different," Poldek observed, stating the obvious for sheer wont of something to say that drew back from the unsettling conversation of seconds ago. The stranger provided a comfortable focus. "Perhaps a resistance fighter, if they think he needs chains. Just another toy for the SS to practice on. A dead man."

"Ack, Poldek, keep your voice down!"

"For what?" Poldek asked, shrugging his shoulders against the protest. "He knows it, look at him! He hasn't so much as twitched for hours."

"I wonder if he isn't hurt," Baldyga wondered out loud, speaking for the first time in hours. His throat certainly knew it; it felt as though dryness gripped it in a clamp.

"Why? What could you do about it if he is?" Poldek pressed relentlessly. "Besides, he is not of us, you don't know what he did to be here."

"He tried to save the Pereira girl, that's what he did!" Baldyga snapped, pushed to his limit by Poldek's ridiculous statements. "He tried, and he got caught. Every man deserves help, even in the smallest way … particularly following such an act."

Poldek threw up his hands. "Fine, Itzak, if that's what you think, no-one's stopping you."

With a parting glare cast at Poldek, Baldyga's feet lead him towards the fellow, his hand skirting the black wood as the car tipped and juddered over different track. The others watched his back, but he gave them no care. The stranger did not look up at his approach, but gave a start when the older man's hand lighted upon his shoulder. The dark eyes lifted to his visitor's face, dulled surprise quickly fading into something less than indifference.

"Might I speak with you, friend?"

The man did not reply, but no objection came from him either, so Baldyga took it upon himself to sit opposite him, tucking his legs under his cold behind. He listened to the other's breathing for a moment, noting the shallowness and slight panting. "Something pains your chest?"

"It's nothing." His voice came as a soft, heavy croak. The action of talking evidently hurt, because his eyes registered it. The sign did not stay long, however, as though the pain was dismissed as irrelevant. "It doesn't matter, anyway."

"I think it does," replied Baldyga, his eyes sighting the darkened stain and tear in the coat. "And it would be against my oath to see that and pay it no attention."

The man's brow peaked briefly in interest. "You're a doctor," he confirmed, more to himself than Baldyga.

"I was," the older man stated, kneeling and shifting the other's coat aside to make his inspection. "The law forbids me to practice now." His blue eyes widened in surprise at his discovery under the swathes of material. "This is an exit wound!"

The man nodded, leaning his head back against the grime of the wood and staring right through it, as though he looked passed a window. "It doesn't matter, not any more."

"Doesn't matter?"

"There are more important things happening right now than me." The stranger started to cough into his collar, his face straining under the effort to keep the fit under control and, Baldyga felt, to harness the pain it caused. He pressed his hand to the other's shoulder supportingly, noting the blood touching the corners of the mouth and mottling the tan material with stark darkness.

"Well," remarked Baldyga, incredulity snagging in his tone, "to me, right now, you are the most important thing – certainly the most interesting thing I have come across in an age!" You should be dead, at least dying. For a man to cough up blood like that, coupled with an exit wound in that position of the chest marked a collapsed lung, most definitely. The chest cavity would be filling with fluid. Survival for such an extensive injury should be minimal, at best. Yet, here this character was, alive after hours of trauma, perfectly lucid and breathing on his own. Baldyga pressed his fingers over the man's pulse, further surprised by the double flutter. He raised his brows in askance, needing the other to confirm what he had found as truth and not an error on his half.

The man registered the look he was being given, and the bloodied corner of his mouth tipped, just for a moment. "I have a very interesting physiology."

"Ha! You don't say!" Baldyga leaned back on his haunches, an action he instantly regretted as the car listed again. His face smoothed as he told the stranger: "I have no medicines to make you more comfortable with. I can't even offer you water."

Again, those words. "It doesn't matter." He shifted slightly, wincing at the action. "They would kill me anyway, your painkillers. Anaphylactic," he stated, as though he divulged a great secret and clearly not taking his own condition very seriously.

Itzak Baldyga observed the man for a moment, swaying steadily with the lull of the car and half expecting this medical mystery he had stumbled upon to die at his feet. The stranger did not hold Baldyga's analytical gaze for long, his eyes drifting back through the blackened wood with a resonating, despairing acceptance.

"Have you a name, sir?"

The man's eyes pulled back to Baldyga again, this time searching him for something. He had never seen such deep eyes… "John Smith," he stated, after considering the question for a longer time than was normally deemed necessary for a name.

"Oh, really? Very English."

The man almost snorted. "Yes, quite so. Quite so…"

"Might I call you John?"

The eyes of the man named John Smith flickered in amusement, though the reason for the reaction lay beyond Baldyga's comprehension. "Yes, if you like. In exchange for your name, of course."

"Itzak Baldyga."

"Hello, Itzak Baldyga; I'd shake your hand, which I think tends to be the custom in moments like this, 'cept I'm a bit – well…" he gave the heavy shackles a cursorily glance.

Despite the situation, Baldyga found himself revering the company of this complete stranger. He had, of course, met strangers on trains before, except not quite under such ridiculously contorted circumstances. He allowed the companionable silence that had managed to steal in and settle itself between them stretch, just for a while. It was bizarre to him how comfortable he felt, conversing with this man, despite the odd air he exuberated about him. There was something of wonder and adventure to him, a chaotic and rash figure of a man: after all, no man of the Ghetto would ever consider drawing such attention to themselves by snatching a child right from under the noses of the SS. But all of that power and ability was somehow crushed, shattered by some enormous load.

"What have you burdened yourself with, my friend?" Baldyga asked quietly. "From where does this defeat come?"

The size of the pain that flamed across John Smith's features was unfathomable. He made to speak, then closed his mouth and swallowed. He tried again, though Baldyga would later think that the success of the action was limited. "I'm like a cancer." Bitterness seeped through, an irrevocable rage at himself shuddering the voice. "Every person I touch turns to dust in my fingers." An angered tear escaped, and he rubbed it furiously away on his shoulder.

"It must be lonely," Baldyga observed quietly, "thinking of yourself in that light all the time."

"It's the truth," John responded, unable to stem the tears and evidently enraged at himself for having allowed them in the first place, a snarl encapsulating his own self loathing. "And she's gone, and it's all my fault."

"Who?" Baldyga pressed gently. "Who's gone?"

The reddened eyes lifted to fix with grey. The young face looked as though it might crumble to dust through sheerest agony. "Rose."