Salt to the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

would protect me.
    My stomach complained. Would the hunger ever fade, retreat in a kind and gentle way and stop its constant knocking? I couldn’t remember not being fearful and hungry, when my stomach didn’t feel pulled with yearning. My mental pictures of Lwów seemed to be fading, like a photograph left outside in the sun.
    Lwów, the city that always smiled, a place of education and culture in Poland. How much of Lwów would survive?
    The knight’s silhouette came into view and inspired me to move faster. I called out and he turned, gun aimed.
    â€œWait. Please,” I said. “I’m coming with you.”
    He turned away from me, then continued on his path.
    I followed his fresh tracks in the snow and felt stronger, the January morning air sharp and crisp in my nostrils. I kept walking, following. After several meters he stopped and turned, furious. “Go away!”
    â€œNo,” I protested.
    â€œIt’s safer for you to stay with the others,” he said.
    Safer? He didn’t realize.
    I was already dead.

joana
    Mornings held the promise of progress, dangling hope with thoughts of the next stop. We all fantasized of more than a barn. The shoe poet talked of grand manors owned by Junkers, wealthy East Prussian aristocrats. The countryside was dotted with their estates and we were bound to come upon one. Poet said he had visited one such manor house prior to the war and thought it was close by. We dreamed the wealthy family would take us in, ladle thick soup into porcelain bowls, and let us warm our frozen toes by the fire.
    Poet walked around the barn, tapping the bottoms of people’s feet with his walking stick. The wandering boy followed. “Time to rise. Feet are strongest in the morning,” said the shoemaker. He arrived in front of me. “Still in fine shape, those boots. Any blisters?”
    â€œNo, Poet.”
    I stood up and brushed myself off. “Is everyone ready to go?”
    â€œThe German deserter and the runaway Pole are gone,” he announced.
    They all thought he was a deserter. My mind flashed to him snapping the identity card and letter from my hand. “I’m surprised he felt well enough to move on so early.”
    â€œHis boots were military issue, but modified,” said the shoepoet. He sighed, shaking his round head of white hair. “This war . . . do you realize that young people are fighting on tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean and marching through the deserts of North Africa? We are freezing and they are dying of heat. So many unfortunate children. The young Polish girl was exhausted. Her feet were swollen, rising like yeast buns in those boots. But sadly, it’s probably for the best. We don’t want them caught among our group. If my mind still serves as well as my feet, we’ll come upon the estate before nightfall. No one will let us in with a deserter and a Pole.”
    â€œOf course it’s for the best,” said Eva. “A deserter and a Pole? I’m sorry, but they’ll be dead on the road in a day.”
    â€œOh my, you’re a blister, Eva. A sour little blister.” The shoe poet laughed and shook his walking stick at her.

alfred
    The morning sky draped cold shadows over the dock. Was my beloved Deutschland losing her footing? Was such a thing possible? Lübeck, Köln, Hamburg. Reports said they were all rubble.
    The U.S. Army Eighth Air Force had bombed the harbor a few months prior. More than a hundred American planes dropped steel suppositories exploding into Gotenhafen. The ship
Stuttgart
was hit and sunk.
    They had bombed before. They would do it again. Three air-raid alerts had been established in a tier of severity. I memorized them:
    Rain.
    Hail.
    Snow.
    In the event of attack, I imagined I’d fire back into the air, wildly shaking a fist of ammunition at them. In my mind, I scaled such mountains of combat often.
    But in the meantime, I employed my keen