The youths, prepared to do anything to end the infernal itching, handed over their garments, ribbing one another and jostling like puppies as they did so.
“Give her your underpants!”
“Never on your life!”
“Well, I am. No bloody good to get rid of the lice in your coat if they’re still running round your balls!”
Later, Lola was hanging the steaming garments—coats, pants, socks, and underpants—over bushes when Branko and Isak emerged from the copse, leading a mule with loaded saddlebags.
Branko was a tall, austere young man with dark hair and eyes that seemed permanently narrowed in an expression of skepticism. Isak came barely up to his shoulders. But Lola noticed, as he swept up his little sister, that he looked stronger across the chest and arms than he had in his student days. His face had lost his indoor pallor and was a little sunburned. He seemed pleased to see Ina; Lola thought his eyes even looked a little moist. But soon he was questioning her closely to make sure she had not made any missteps that would betray their position.
Reassured, he turned to Lola. “Thank you for bringing her. Thank you for coming.”
Lola shrugged, unsure what to say. It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice, but she didn’t want to say that in front of Branko, who would decide if she could stay or not. Little Ina, it seemed, they had a use for. A child could wander inconspicuously around town, observing enemy activities. Lola’s uses were less clear to Branko, and Isak’s introduction didn’t help.
“Lola is a comrade from Hashomer Haza’ir,” Isak told Branko. “She came to all the meetings. Well, almost all. She’s a good hiker.…” Isak, who had never paid the least attention to Lola, ran out of things to say that might recommend her to his commander.
Branko stared at her with his narrowed eyes until Lola felt her face burn. He lifted a corner of the jacket she had spread out to dry. “And a good laundress. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for such luxuries.”
“Lice.” She could barely get the word out. “They carry typhus.” She hurried on, before her nerve failed. “In case of infestation, you…you have to boil all clothes and linens, at least weekly…to…to kill the eggs…otherwise the whole odred could become infected.” Mordechai had taught her that. It was the kind of practical information that Lola could understand and remember.
“So,” said Branko. “You know something.”
“I…I…know how to splint a fracture, and stanch bleeding, and treat bites.… I can learn.…”
“We could use a medic.” Branko continued to regard her, as if by staring alone he could somehow assess her abilities. “Isak has been doing the job, but he has other heavy responsibilities. He could teach you what he knows, maybe. And later, if you do well, we could send you to one of the secret hospitals to learn about treating wounds. I will think about it.”
He turned away then, and Lola let out a breath. Then it seemed he reconsidered and turned his blue stare upon her once again. “Meanwhile, we are in need of a muleteer. How do you feel about mules?”
Lola could hardly say that she didn’t know the front of a mule from the back. But she worried that Isak might find her too stupid to be a medic. She looked at the beast cropping the grass. She walked over and lifted the straps where they cut into his hide. The flesh was raw and weeping.
“I know that you should put a saddlecloth under a heavy load such as this,” she said, “if you want the beast to work for you.” She opened the saddlebags and began removing several of the heaviest packages and carrying them into the house. When Oskar strode over to relieve her of them, she shook her head. “I can manage,” she said. She gave a shy smile. “In my family, I was the mule.”
Everyone laughed then, including Branko. Nothing more was said, but Lola understood that she had been accepted as a member of the odred.
That night, around the pec, as Branko spoke to them of his plans, Lola’s doubts revisited her. Branko was a zealot. In Belgrade he’d been interrogated and beaten for his political activism. He spoke about Tito and Stalin, and about their own duty to follow these two glorious leaders without question. “Your life is not yours,” he said. “Every extra day you are given belongs to those of your families who have died. We will see our country free, or we, too, will die. There is no other future before us.”
Afterward, Lola lay awake on her hard pallet feeling lost and alone, longing for the gentle warmth of Dora’s rounded little back. She did not want to accept the truth of what Branko had said, that her family was dead. Yet the hollow place inside her left little room for hope. The escape from the city and flight through the countryside had filled her mind. But now, as she listened to the snores of strangers, she felt a dull ache. From then on, everything she did would be like moving through a fog.
Over the next few days, Lola considered the mule. She could do very little with him that he had not already decided to do. The first time she was charged with leading him to a drop point to fetch supplies, the mule rebelled against the gradient and pitched his load into a bramble patch. Lola had to brave thorns to retrieve the boxes of ammunition, with Branko’s curses falling on her like blows.
Every day, Lola approached the mule tentatively, smearing salve from their limited supplies on his broken hide while he hawed and brayed as if she were flogging him. Gradually, his raw patches healed. Lola sewed pads to sit under the saddlecloth. She puzzled out an A-frame, made of light willow boughs, that better distributed his loads. On long marches, she asked that the mule be given the opportunity to browse when they came upon a patch of wild anise or clover.
Ill treated, the mule had been ill behaved. But he began to respond to Lola’s attentions, and before long would nuzzle her with wet affection. She came to like stroking his velvety ears. She named him Rid, for the carroty color of his coat, and because red was the signature color of the Partisan movement.
Lola soon realized that for all Branko’s talk, their odred wasn’t much of a fighting force. Apart from Branko himself, only Isak and Maks had Sten guns. The farm lads and lasses had arrived with a shotgun each. The brigade commander promised them more weapons, but after every drop it seemed that some other odred’s needs were more pressing.
Oskar complained of this more than anyone, until Branko told him that if he wanted a gun so badly, he should capture one. “Ina did it, and she’s only ten years old,” he taunted.
That night, Oskar left the campsite. He did not return the next day. Lola overheard Isak rebuking Branko. “You goaded him into undertaking a fool’s errand. How can he capture a weapon when he has no weapon to use?”
Branko shrugged. “Your sister did.” He had taken the Luger from Ina and wore it, with some swagger, on his hip. That night, Lola was helping Zlata gather wood for the cook fire when Oskar came crashing through the trees, the grin on his face wide as a clown’s. Over his shoulder he had a German rifle. He was wearing a baggy gray uniform several sizes too large for him, pant legs rolled up and the waist cinched with twine, and carrying a Nazi-issue rucksack bulging with supplies.
He refused to tell the tale of his triumph until Branko, Isak, and the rest of the odred had gathered. As he handed around slices of German sausage, he told how he had crept into the nearby occupied village and hidden in some roadside bushes. “I had to lie there almost all day, watching the Germans come and go,” he said. “There were always two or three of them together. At last, one comes by, alone. I wait till he passes. I jump out of the bushes, shove a stick between his shoulder blades, and shout, Stoi! The ass actually believed I was armed. He raised his hands. I got his gun, and then I told him to strip to his underpants.”
Everyone was convulsed with laughter at this point, except Branko.
“And then. You shot him.” His voice was flat and cold.