Day After Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

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     desire than tobacco.
    She inhaled once more before tapping the cigarette out gently on the bottom of her
     shoe, then put the rest into her pocket to save until after dinner. The anticipation
     sweetened her whole day. Walking to and from the barrack, reading her newspaper, ignoring
     the fatuous conversation of the girls around her, she reached for it often, almost
     tasting it with her fingers. At dinner, even the bland eggplant and white cheese tasted
     sharper because of what was coming.
    Zorah denied herself until the last minute and then slipped behind the latrine just
     before lights-out. She took her prize out of her pocket and massaged it gently back
     into shape. Before lighting it, she forced herself to pause for one final moment,
     watching as the last purple light of day faded to gray in the sky above the mountains.
    She struck a match and inhaled deeply. The first puff, burned and sour, made her cough.
     But the next one was perfect and she held it in her lungs for as long as she could.
     She exhaled slowly, tasting the smoke as it left her. The third puff conjured a memory
     of her Uncle Moshe’s pipe mix, which in turn recalled the flavor of Aunt Faygie’s
     Rosh Hashanah baked apples. Zorah counted back; it had been four years since she’d
     eaten those apples; she had been fifteen years old.
    Later, as she lay in the dark, Zorah noticed that her neck was not as tight as usual
     and wondered if nicotine was the cure for her insomnia. The woman on the cot beside
     her grunted in her sleep and rolled from her back to her side. Zorah savored the ten
     inches between them. On the boat from Europe to Haifa, and before that, in the DP
     center, in the forest, in the camp, in the boxcars, she had been piled, like a stick
     of wood, against other bodies that crawled with lice or burned with fever. Some had
     been clammy with sweat, and twice, rigid and cold. Zorah stretched out her arms, luxuriating
     in the space around her, the only thing in Atlit for which she was grateful.
    Zorah tried to find the heavy satisfaction of the smoke in her lungs again, but the
     sensation was gone, like those argumentative Romanian boys who had, indirectly, been
     responsible for her American cigarette. Though she envied their escape, living on
     a kibbutz did not appeal to her. From what she had heard, it sounded a lot like Atlit:
     communal meals and bathrooms, order imposed by others.
    Zorah wanted her own room and no one telling her when to go to bed at night or get
     up in the morning, or what kind of work to do. She knew these were extravagant wishes
     in a poor country, and she had no idea whether she would be able to make such a life
     for herself in a place where it seemed everyonewas made to obey orders if only they were delivered by other Jews.
    Not that she expected to leave anytime soon. She had no relatives in Palestine nor
     anyone willing to pose as family. She had never attended a Zionist youth meeting in
     Poland, nor had she ingratiated herself to the giddy new pioneers who were hatching
     all around her. But the biggest problem of all was that she had no papers. Officially,
     she did not exist.
    She had walked out of the concentration camp so dazed and weak, she had been unable
     to think about what lay ahead. But when the Red Cross workers asked if she wanted
     a ticket back to Warsaw, she shook her head. She had been the only one in her family
     to make it through the first selection; there was no one and nothing to go back to.
    In the DP camp, there were boys and girls who talked endlessly about Palestine as
     both home and hope, and since Zorah had neither she threw in her lot with them, joining
     with a small, well-organized group of Young Guards—the biggest of the Socialist Zionist
     youth movements. They boarded a train to Marseille, where they were met by a chain-smoking
     envoy from Palestine who led them to a flatbed truck, which jolted and bruised them
     for a day and a night until they