My Bridges of Hope by Livia Bitton-Jackson Page B

two-thirty A.M . I don’t know, my child. Hurry downstairs. He wants to speak to you.”
    By the time I get downstairs, my eyes are adjusted to the dark, and I can see Sruli’s tall silhouette against the front entrance.
    â€œMiss Friedmann, listen carefully. We are in grave danger. The guide we hired for the climbing expedition came to our villa to alert me. Drunken partisans from the village are on their way here. We have to get out before they get here and harm the children. You have to get them out of here in the next ten, fifteen minutes.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘out of here’? Where to?”
    â€œTo the train station. We must leave here. To escape the partisans. They want to kill the children.”
    â€œYou mean the climbing expedition is off?”
    â€œEverything is off. Wake the children and get them ready. You must leave the villa by the rear exit. The boys and I can meet you in the clearing at the bottom of the hill in twenty, twenty-five minutes. The guide says there’s a train for Bratislava at four A.M . That’sour only hope of escape. If we hurry, we can make it. Can you do it?”
    â€œI ... I think so. How do we get to the train station?”
    â€œOn foot. I know a shortcut through the hills. Do you know the villa’s rear exit?”
    â€œYes.” On the day of our arrival I roamed the villa, my enchanted castle, and came upon the narrow, bolted door in the cellar. I unbolted it and followed the narrow trail as it wound its way to a clearing in the valley. From there the steeple of the church was visible and puffs of smoke from the passing locomotive reached me among the trees. That must be the shortcut to the train station.
    â€œMiss Friedmann, hurry. Meet you in the clearing.” Sruli shuts the front door soundlessly, and I dash up the stairs to the children’s bedrooms. The next ten, fifteen minutes is all a blur. Mrs. Gold is already dressing some groggy little children, and I rapidly pull dresses, shirts, and sweaters over slumping heads. There is no time to explain. The older girls are bewildered as I goad them out of their warm beds and prod them to dress quickly, very quickly, in the dark. We arestuffing belongings in every available container—trunk, bag, basket, even laundry sack. Mrs. Gold dumps the sandwiches that were ready for the climbing expedition into pillowcases.
    Without asking questions the unkempt children follow as we descend one flight of stairs. On the upper landing the grandfather clock shows five minutes to three. God, in five minutes we must be at the bottom of the hill! This is insane. In the moonlight the minute hand is like an eerie, elongated warning finger stretching to who knows where.
    There is a sudden crashing sound. Huge pieces of glass hit the lowest stairs before we reach them. Another ear-shattering crash, and the grandfather clock tumbles and dissolves into a myriad of sparkling fragments seconds after the last child leaves the landing.
    The little ones begin to shriek in fright. I take Marko on my arm and place my other hand over little Jutka’s mouth. Mrs. Gold reaches out to calm the others. We virtually drag the children down the steep cellar stairs as more rocks crash through the villa’s large windows. Luckily, the steady thunderclaps ofthe stone barrage drown out the children’s hysterical shrieks.
    They have reached the front gate and I can hear ear-shattering blows against the thick wood. Any moment now they will break through. God, save us.
    We reach the entrance to the cellar. Marko’s arms feel like a stranglehold about my neck as I bend down to force open the cellar door. Bronia is clinging to my right thigh. Several little hands are clutching at me from all sides. I am a cluster of clinging bodies as we make our steep, precarious descent. Mrs. Gold and the older girls are hauling the baggage on the spiraling cellar steps. Torchlights zigzag above as we reach the