Read Those Who Save Us for Free Online

looking again this way and that, Anna approaches the librarian.
    What’s happening? she asks, voice low. Who has done this to you?
    Herr Nussbaum stares resolutely at the house opposite, remaining quite still except to tremble in the sleet that spits like sand from the sky.
    Anna drops her net bag of purchases to the pavement and starts to remove her coat.
    Here, she says. Put this on.
    The librarian ignores her. His long medieval face belongs over a ruff in a portrait, his gaze the sort that would follow the viewer to any corner of the room. Now the severe dark eyes that so frightened Anna as a child are terrified themselves, rheumy and watering from fear and wind.
    Go away, he says, without moving his mouth.
    What?
    Get away from me with that coat, you stupid girl. They’re watching.
    Who?
    Anna glances over her shoulder. On the ground door of the dwelling across the road, a curtain flutters, then falls back into place.
    But you mustn’t mind your neighbors, she whispers. If they had any decency, they’d take you in. You must be freezing—Not them, you idiot, the librarian mutters through his wispy beard. The SS.
    SS? Where? I don’t see—
    Everywhere. SS and Gestapo. Something has set them off; they’re on a real rampage. Started going through the Quarter this morning looking for something, God knows what. And they haven’t stopped since.
    Anna’s stomach turns to water.
    Every house? What about the Doktor ? Herr Doktor Stern? Did they—
    The librarian gives a small fatalistic shrug: probably, it says.
    You’re just making things worse for me, he hisses. Go away!
    Anna seizes her bag and runs down the street toward the clinic. It looks as it always does, with its soot-stained stones and bronze nameplate, and for a moment Anna is reassured. Then she touches the door in the center of the six-pointed Star, and it swings wide to reveal the reception area dark and empty behind it.
    Max? Anna calls.
    Well, perhaps he has no appointments this afternoon. Most of his patients have emigrated anyway, and the remainder will not be seeking medical attention with the SS about. But—
    Max?
    Anna peers into the examining room. It is in wild disarray, the apothecary jars smashed, cotton wadding soaking up medicine on the tiles. The filing cabinet has been forced open to regurgitate its patient histories on the floor: GOLDSTEIN, JOSEPH ISRAEL, says the one Anna steps on, in Max’s distinctive, all-capitals hand; 3 MARCH 1940, SEVERE HEMA-TOMAS FROM BEATING, COMPLAINT OF PAIN IN THE LEFT ARM — Max! Max—In the kitchen, a teacup lies on its side on the table, milky curds clinging to the rim. The plants have been swept from their perch, and there are large bootprints in the soil surrounding the shattered clay pots. Anna races upstairs to Max’s bedroom, a place to which she has never been but often envisioned visiting under very different circumstances. It is small and impersonal and similarly despoiled, the mattress and pillows slit in an explosion of feathers, sheets on the floor. Anna picks one up in icy hands and buries her face in it; it smells of Max, of his hair and sleep. Then she flings it aside and descends the steps on legs that feel both rubbery and too heavy, as they sometimes do just before her time of the month, as though the blood in them is more responsive than usual to the pull of gravity. There is an unpleasant odor in the hall, reminiscent of sheared copper. It grows stronger as Anna follows it to the door of the shed.
    The fanlight window over the clinic entrance brightens for a second with weak sunlight as she opens the door, enough to show her the animals before dimming again, and at first Anna thinks they are sleeping. Then her vision adjusts and she realizes they are dead. The dogs must have been shot or stabbed, for blood drips from the cages, the air thick with its metallic stench. The cat’s fate is clearer: its skull has been crushed along with those of its kittens, whose corpses lie in a drift by