The Avengers by Rich Cohen

Author:Rich Cohen [Cohen, Rich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5120-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Vitka Kempner.

“These people go to the forest,” said Sonia, “or they die.”

Vitka said she would make a decision after the mission.

The partisans spent the night in the fur factory. In the morning, Vitka went alone to the city. Wandering the twisting streets, past crowds of soldiers and girls in school uniforms, she closed her eyes and muttered. The stores were open, the newsstands posted headlines—life went on as before. For a moment, she felt as if she had never been born. On the avenue, down which the Jews had been driven to the ghetto, a normal street coursing with normal weekday traffic, she was overcome with hatred. It was a great reassurance. It proved that she had been born, that she was as much a part of this world as the schoolgirls and the soldiers. You cannot count on the love of your fellow man, she knew that. You cannot count on the decency of your neighbors, she knew that too. Nor can you count on tomorrow looking like today. But hate—you can count on hate. Vitka found herself in the industrial quarter, beneath the towers and smokestacks, looking for targets. Back at the fur factory, she told the others her plan: the boys would hit the waterworks, which supplied the sewers and taps, while the girls hit the electrical transformers, which gave the city light.

After sunset, the partisans drifted into the city. The squares of the city were crowded with soldiers on leave, a current of voices. It was the moment when, a few years earlier, Jews had broken their holiday fasts, sitting down to big, steamy family dinners. The boys left the girls on the street, promising to meet at the fur factory in an hour. The boys let the crowd carry them, past houses and buildings, to the waterworks. In front of the building, there was a manhole. The boys circled the block until the street was empty. Then, one of the boys—his name was Mates Levin and he had been trained as a plumber—lifted up the manhole cover. The second boy climbed in and Levin followed. When his eyes adjusted, he could see the iron ladder stretching below and the pipes going in every direction. It was a great switching station that carried water across the city. Crawling to the junction of the pipes, Levin attached two mines with a click. He set the timer for four hours. He then climbed up, lifted the manhole cover, looked out, saw no one coming, and scrambled into the street.

The girls were on the other side of the city, in the factory sprawl along the river. Tugboats and barges lined the banks and there were foghorns and factory whistles and gulls rising from the dumps. The electrical transformers were spooky grids that hummed in the night sky. They were not protected, not even by a fence. Now and then, there was a pop and a current buzzed up the coils. Vitka put a mine on one of the metal grids; it slid to the ground.

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