Page 54 - LEIBY

54 Leiby – Border Smuggler

reveled in them! How could he possibly not remember her?
A sudden thought flitted through his mind and fear gripped
his heart. Was it possible that Mirushka didn’t remember him?
No, it couldn’t be. He recalled more experiences that he and
Mirushka had enjoyed together. The memories rose up in his
mind – the endless stories he had told her to help pass the time
until their parents returned, the beads he had strung together to
make her a necklace, and the bracelet he had fashioned for her
from some scraps of wood that he had found near the schoffim.15
There were some less pleasant memories too. He had hidden
with her during an aktzia in the maluna that his parents had
prepared for them at the bottom of a dried-up well in their
courtyard and soothed her there for hours. Mirushka had been
his whole world in the dark days in the ghetto, a ray of light in
his dismal life, and she had loved him with all her heart. She
had always run to greet him as soon as he arrived home and
wanted only him. How could he not remember her? He would
surely recognize her, even if there were another hundred girls
there.

Their journey continued, the cart’s wheels throwing up clods of
earth on all sides and flinging mud into Yosef ’s tear-filled eyes.
They passed a sleepy village and looked at the children running
around in the large square in the village center. For Yosef, a
fleeting glance was sufficient to see that none of them was his
sister. He remembered Mirushka as clearly as the sun dappling
the village roofs and was positive that she wasn’t there. On they
traveled, and in the next village were more children, playing
with small pebbles around the well.

“Is Mirushka here?” Leiby asked in a low voice.

It took Yosef just a couple of moments to scan the group of
curly-haired, barefooted children and to shake his head firmly.
“No, I don’t see Mirushka here.”

In the third village they passed through, they saw children
playing on haystacks that had been piled up near the dirt path.

15 ^ĐŚŽĸŵ ʹ ĨĂĐƚŽƌŝĞƐ ŽĨ 'ĞƌŵĂŶ ŽǁŶĞƌƐŚŝƉ ǁŚĞƌĞ ƚŚĞ :ĞǁƐ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ
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