The Worm in Every Heart Read Free

a stray strand of wire must have nicked her lobe—
    â€œEverything starts over at the bottom, you see. Like in alchemy. Albedo out of nigredo, the gold out of the dungheap. The Philosopher’s Stone, pretty girl; true paradise, regained.”
    Kotzeleh squints hard against the dim light, sniffing long and loud. “This doesn’t smell much like paradise,” she says.
    A laugh, impossibly dry: “No, it doesn’t, does it?”
    Up ahead, Fat Chavah gives a warning hiss—footsteps, jackboots, passing by above. Lev and Kotzeleh freeze, rooted in the murky eddy, feeling for their triggers. But it’s a false alarm, “like always” . . .
    Except when it isn’t.
    â€œCould be we just haven’t gone down far enough yet,” Lev suggests, finally—trying to sound like he’s joking, probably. And failing.
    * * *
    A day later, loaded down with new-won weaponry and making straight for Home Army headquarters—Ochota, 80 Wawelska Street, the last Old Town building left both standing and occupied—Kotzeleh and her companions run straight into that same chatty contact who sold them bullets sloshing back the other way, a straggly crocodile of fellow refugees in tow. The sound of their guns cocking in the dark makes him jump and freeze, ‘til he takes a hesitant half-step further into the light and realizes who’s leading the pack.
    Relaxing: “Oh, so it’s you, dumpling.”
    And now with the charm.
    â€œAs you see,” Kotzeleh says—stating the obvious, studiously bland. “You should tell your people to walk quieter from now on, if they don’t want to run into company; there’s two patrols a mile ‘til you get to the suburbs.”
    â€œAh, yes.” The contact leans closer, lowers his voice, assuming an intimacy Kotzeleh finds vaguely grotesque. “And you know why, of course.”
    â€œTo kill us.”
    â€œPartly.” A beat. “They got Radoslaw this morning.”
    Radoslaw.
    Colonel Jan Mazurkiewicz, the Home Army’s highest-ranking “officer.” Behind her, Kotzeleh hears Fat Chavah make a noise somewhere between a sob and a sigh; Lev sags sideways against the sewer wall for a second, but masters himself almost immediately. While Kotzeleh just stands there, her cold eyes half-lashed, daring the contact to frisk her (metaphorically) for any signs of normal human weakness: staring down the future’s foregone conclusion like it was just another open pipe-mouth full of stink and danger, just another black and empty barrel on another Nazi gun.
    So this is the end,
she thinks, feeling nothing. And notes, aloud, with an acid little nod to his sleeve—
    â€œThat must be why you took off your armband.”
    The contact shrugs, unfazed. “Wear the Home Army’s insignia from now on, you might as well paint a target on your chest.” He gestures at the hard-breathing crowd behind him like he’s showing off what he bought for dinner. “
They
need me alive, dumpling, to get them past the barriers; they want me alive, because
they
want to live. Can you blame them?”
    THEM, no. But—
    â€œâ€”you should go too, maybe,” Lev puts in, suddenly. Adding, as Kotzeleh pins him with a glare: “Look, it only makes sense, nu? While you still can.”
    â€œI’m fine where I am.”
    â€œBut you . . . ” He trails off. “You could get word to somebody, that’s all I’m thinking. Get them to send back reinforcements.”
    And if there’s no one left to send, Rabbi? What then?
    â€œWhy don’t you go yourself, if you’re so eager?” she snaps.
    And now it’s Lev’s turn to raise his brows and shrug, throwing an ironic glance the contact’s way—his thoughts so clear that Kotzeleh can practically hear them in her head.
What, me, with the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion tattooed on my face? To men like