The Night Crossing by Karen Ackerman Read Free Book Online Page B

dining room table to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath. Mama always began the Sabbath by lighting the candles. She moved her hands in a small circle above the flame of each candle. Then she raised her hands and covered her eyes, as she recited the
bracha
, the Sabbath blessing.
    Clara liked to say the blessing along with her mother. It began “
Baruch atah Adonai,”
and her mother’s voice was always full of gentleness and love. Butnow there was a law that forbade Jews from celebrating the Sabbath or going to the synagogue.
    By the time Papa returned home, the silver candlesticks had been sewn into the folds of Marta’s heavy muslin petticoat. Papa shook his head but said nothing.
    He pulled a handful of money from his coat pocket and laid the bills on the table. “From this moment, all of you must remember that we are no longer Austrians. We are citizens of Switzerland,” he declared.
    “Will we cross the mountains like Grandma did?” Clara asked excitedly. A night crossing seemed like a great adventure to her, and she was curious to see the high, snowy Alps that markedthe border between Austria and Switzerland.
    “Yes, like Grandma,” Papa answered. “But we’re pretending to have been visiting for just a few days, so Mama can pack just one satchel. We mustn’t look like we are escaping, so you and Marta can take only what you can wear or put in your pockets. And remember that we’ll be walking a very long way.”
    Marta frowned. She knew she would have to leave her new schoolbooks behind. Still, she was determined to find room for at least a few of them.
    Clara looked through her wardrobe and tried to pick out the dress with the biggest pockets. At last she chose one that Grandma had made for her. It had two giant pockets on the top and amatching pinafore with pockets all across the bottom. She looked sadly at the small vanity table that Papa had bought used and refinished for her on her last birthday. Now it would never be covered with perfume bottles and tins of bath powder like Marta’s table in the opposite corner. Silently Clara said good-bye to the vanity and to all of the things she would be leaving behind.
    That evening the family sat down to a final supper in their Austrian home. Mama seemed nervous as she served the meal, but Papa looked happy for the first time in months.
    He lifted a glass of water, which was all they had to drink.
    “To our freedom,” he toasted. “And to a safe night crossing.”
    Then, as Marta put her glass back down, they all heard the pair of silver candlesticks clink inside the folds of her petticoat.

3
    M arta and Clara went to bed fully dressed in the clothes they would wear on their journey hours later. Slight shadows remained on each of their coats in the places where Mama had removed the yellow stars.
    Clara’s pockets took up a lot of room in the bed because she had tucked some hair ribbons and a tiny silver-edgedmirror—as well as Gittel and Lotte—inside them. And Marta had a terrible time trying to fall asleep. The pockets and folds of her clanking petticoat were stuffed with Mama’s candlesticks and a few very heavy hardbound schoolbooks.
    It was still pitch dark outside when Papa woke them. Sleepily Marta and Clara rolled out of bed and followed him to where Mama waited near the cellar door, holding the family’s only satchel.
    “Absolute silence,” Papa whispered as the four of them slipped out to the street.
    The family walked and walked, past all the familiar houses and buildings in their neighborhood, being careful to hide in whatever shadows the creeping sunrise left undisturbed. Quietly each of them said a silent, special good-bye to the city they loved, which was once beautiful but now looked so broken and beaten.

    At last they reached a small farmhouse with a barn a few miles outside the city of Innsbruck. Papa led them silently into the barn, where they settled behind the protective cover of two large hay bales. Then Papa peered through the barn