The Worm in Every Heart Read Free Page A

this, I’m not even Polish—but you, Kotzeleh, you. You, my dear . . .
    . . . can pass.
    As she already has done, many times, and may well do a few more before the bullet hits the bone. Yet the injustice of it twists in her nonetheless, raising a flush under sewer-pale skin—the contact, smiling that bad-teeth corpse’s smile at her, his offer a secret handshake, a shared sin, the same temptation she’s had to guard against since bombs first began to fall. A siren song whose first verse always sounds like
leave the Jews behind and come along, sweetheart, you with your pretty blond hair and your straight little nose, so Aryan-pure you’d fool the Fuhrer himself,
whose chorus always sounds like
just leave them to die down here like the rats they are, come along with us up into daylight, and survive . . .
    â€œYou could live a long time,” the contact tells her, smiling wider. “You’re young yet, dumpling.”
    Kotzeleh takes one last look at him for reference, then tucks her gun away again; he isn’t worth the effort, let alone the ammunition. Answering, simply—
    â€œNo. I’m not.”
    To which the contact frowns, mouth kiting up on one side, like he’s bitten into something sour. But whatever comeback he’s planning is derailed when—with an ugly, scraping CLANG—the manhole above them is suddenly prised up, popping free like a boil to reveal a knot of gaping Nazi faces.
    The refugees flatten, shrieks rising. A woman grabs both her children with a hand across each one’s mouth, hauling them backwards out of sight, as confusion—ever-infectious—rips through the crowd around her. Caught full in the spill of sunshine, Kotzeleh goes for her gun but somehow gets her knife instead; she turns to see the contact waving frantically upwards, yelling: “
Mein herren
, no, don’t shoot! We—”
    And: Is that really the trail of an “s,” right there at the end? Kotzeleh will never know, not that it matters—her blade has already punched through his voicebox and out the other side before she even thinks to aim it, loosing a startlingly vivid pump of heart’s blood twenty feet in the air to spatter some Nazi’s cheek.
    Because that’s what you get for not wearing your armband, you “charming” bastard. You get to die after all, the same as everybody else, even dirty Christ-killers like Lev—
    (and me)
    Another refugee, male this time, swerves in mid-flight to punch her full in the mouth,
hard
. And spits, as he does it: “Crazy bitch!”
    Kotzeleh grins, through pinkening teeth. “Crazy
Jew
bitch,” she corrects, gently.
    Then the shooting finally starts.
    Machine-gun chatter magnified from a thousand reverberate curves, kicking up brown spray as Chavah, Lev and Kotzeleh dive one way, the refugees the other—hot whine ruffling the rat-tailed nape of Kotzeleh’s neck as Lev fires past her, a lucky shot that erases half of one Nazi’s face in a single bloodjet burst. And then down, down, further and faster, slipping and sliding on corroded metal, shit-slimed clumps of trash.
    They pause near a grate, a rushing waterfall of sludge, hearts hammering; Kotzeleh puts her head between her knees to clear it, and raises it again to an unfamiliar sound. Some odd sort of rhythmic, mechanical grunting that reaches them only sporadically, sandwiched between fresh volleys.
    â€œThey should be chasing us,” Lev murmurs, to himself. Then, watching Fat Chavah sniff and Kotzeleh wrinkle her brow, still trying to place that ever-growing noise: “What is it you’re smelling, you two?”
    Fat Chavah: “ . . . flowers?”
    Gas.
    * * *
    Not even a hundred years since the Warsaw sewers’ endless night; she
is
still so very young yet, after all. Or at least by her new tribe’s reckoning.
    Kotzeleh knows about monsters, then as now. The golem, the