Alexander Altmann A10567 Read Online Free PDF Page B

get them both killed.
    “I just need a few pointers,” Isidor whispered.
    Alexander swung his arms harder. When the men entered a forest, the kapo held up his giant hand and the inmates stopped. The officers slung their guns over their shoulders and sat down in the tall grass to smoke while the prisoners stood in a cluster and waited.
    “Were you serious?” Alexander asked Isidor when he saw the other inmates talk among themselves. “You’ve never worked with horses?”
    Isidor shrugged. “I’m a city boy.”
    Alexander stared at him. He needn’t have worried about the boy becoming his friend. They had nothing in common. Isidor lived in the city and Alexander hated the city. He hated the stinking smoke and the ugly factories. He hated the overcrowded streets and the tiny apartments with their concrete backyards. Alexander lived to ride horses. Isidor had never sat on one. Alexander deserved this job. Isidor had stolen it from some poor farmer whose hand hadn’t shot up fast enough at rollcall.
    “So, I figured you can teach me,” Isidor said.
    “And what do I get out of it?” Alexander shot back.
    “My friendship,” Isidor ventured.
    Friendship? Alexander almost laughed out loud. A friend was someone you played stickball with. Someone you clambered up trees after and waded into rivers with to catch frogs. A friend was someone you spent your winters with building snow forts. A boy like Anton Hudak. If Anton was still his friend.
    “I’m not looking for a friend,” Alexander said, wondering if he’d ever be able to erase the image of his best friend standing at the bus stop in Hlavna Street wearing a brown uniform and a swastika armband.
    “We all need friends,” Isidor whispered, “especially here.”
    “You’re wrong.” If he’d learned anything these past few months it was that to care meant to be weak. His survival depended on him being impervious to other people’s feelings, as well as his own. If I was soft, he thought, would I have been able to throw a baby over a fence? Alexander’s fingernails punctured his palms as he recalled his aunt and uncle returning from Budapest to find the rest of their family behind the ghetto walls. Ruth and Jacob had left for Budapest, and had asked Alexander’s mother to mind their baby while they were gone. A week later the Altmanns were forced from their farm. With no one to leave her sister’s four-month-old baby with, Alexander’s mother had taken Sammy into the ghetto with them.
Throw him over
, his aunt Ruth had whispered, reaching her fingers through the gaps in the fence to stroke Sammy’s face.
Quick, before the guards come
. Alexander hadn’t wanted to, but he’d had no choice.
You’re a rock
, he’d told himself.
You’re a brick wall
. Do it. He lifted his cousin above his head and, with trembling hands, launched Sammy into the air.
    Alexander’s heart skipped a beat, as it had that day in the ghetto when his aunt, reaching up with splayed fingertips, caught the child.
    “I can help you,” Isidor continued. “I know people and I know how this place works. I know where to get food and I know where to find socks.”
    Alexander wriggled his blistered toes. If he didn’t help the boy, Isidor would end up endangering a horse because of his inexperience and it might end badly for all of them. Really badly. He had no choice. Alexander rubbed his stomach and wondered what to ask for first – a carrot or an apple.
    Alexander spoke quickly as the guards rose to their feet. “The first tip is never walk behind a horse or directly in front of it. They’re both blind spots and the horse will run over the top of you or swing into you and knock you flat.” Isidor’s eyes widened and Alexander sneered. Not so cocky now, are you, city boy?
    Alexander heard the horses before he saw them. The hills echoed with the sound of their pounding hooves and, as he neared the gate, the air grew thick with the unmistakable smell of saddle leather. He walked