The Night Crossing by Karen Ackerman

Author:Karen Ackerman [Ackerman, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-77019-6
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

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 door carefully, stepped outside, and quickly made his way toward the house.

Both Clara and Marta were surprised that unlike the city, the Austrian countryside seemed untouched by the war. The fields and woods were still as lush as when their parents had brought Clara and Marta to the country for a picnic long ago. Each house had a small, steady stream of smoke rising from its chimney. It was as if the Austrian farmlands had not gone to war with the German army at all.

When Papa returned, he had a small cloth filled with goat cheese and hard brown bread. The two girls ate as much as they wanted, and then their parents finished what was left.

For an entire day they stayed hidden in the barn. When the two girls weren’t sleeping, Marta read from the books she’d stuffed into her pockets, and Clara played with Gittel and Lotte. The night crossing wasn’t so bad after all, Clara thought.

For hours Papa sat watching the farm road through the barn slats and studying the small map that the Resistance had drawn for him to show where it was safe—or nearly safe—for the family to walk.

Meanwhile, Mama gazed at the Swiss Alps in the distance. The Swiss border was still far away, and to reach it the family would have to climb over the steep, rocky foothills of one of the tallest mountain ranges in the world.

When the sun finally set, Papa led them from the barn to the thick woods beyond the farmhouse.

Every now and then the silver candlesticks clinked in their hiding place inside Marta’s petticoat.

Again the family walked and walked in the dark, past crop fields and cow pastures and hedgerows that barely provided them with cover from either the light of the moon or the bitter cold.

Clara’s feet began to hurt, and then to swell, so Papa had to pick her up and carry her on his back. Marta and Mama looked more exhausted with every mile. All of them felt grumpy and tired, even Papa, who answered their questions about how much longer and how much farther they would have to walk with unusually sharp replies.

“Just walk,” he told them. “Keep walking.”

Once during the night the family had to hide quickly from Nazi armored tanks that roared past them on the road near the woods. Then they began to walk again.

When a small patrol suddenly appeared, Papa motioned to be quiet, and they all crouched behind some weeds at the side of the road.

A soldier came close and poked around with the bayonet at the end of his rifle. Peeking out from beneath her father’s arms, Clara saw the moonlight reflecting off the bayonet’s sharp blade.

The buttons on the soldier’s uniform were polished brightly.

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