The Book of Ghosts by Reed Farrel Coleman Page B

how it helps your cause,” she said, although the quiver in her voice betrayed her words.
    â€œPoor Isaac came to me, frantic, explaining the situation and how he feared our whole barracks might be punished for his indiscretion. ‘If they think you all knew about the book and didn’t tell them,’ he said, ‘who knows how they will punish you?’”
    The woman was hooked, so much so that she reached across the table for Jacob’s hand. “Please, tell me what happened next?”
    â€œUnder cover of darkness, Becker and I snuck back to Kleinmann’s little office where the book was hidden. We were prying open the lock when Kleinmann caught us in the act. I stabbed the monster through the neck with a piece of sharpened glass. Here,” Jacob whispered, reaching out and touching the soft white skin of the American’s neck, “but not before he had wounded Isaac in the leg. I wanted to stay, to help my friend, but he wouldn’t hear of it. All he could think about was the book. ‘Save yourself,’ he said, ‘and smuggle the book out of here no matter what it takes. The world must know what happened in this place.’ I did as he asked. I wrapped the book in some fabric and rubber sheeting I had bartered for with one of the guards. The next morning I slipped the package into a wagon of ashes headed for one of the nearby farms I heard was owned by a man in the Polish resistance. Did you know the Poles used our ashes as fertilizer? We were no use to them alive, but dead …”
    â€œOh, my God!” she gasped, tears running down her cheeks. “And Becker, what happened to Isaac Becker?”
    â€œTortured, then crucified. Took him three days to die and they left his body for everyone to see as the birds gnawed at him.”
    â€œThe book. What became of the book?” She wanted desperately to know.
    Jacob Weisen shrugged his broad shoulders. “It could be plowed beneath the soil in some Polish farmer’s field or it could be anywhere. I fear we will never know.” Jacob could have left it at that, but didn’t. He was so encouraged by the woman’s touch, her tears, and her beauty, that he took one step too far. “So you see—I’m sorry, I have been impolite. What is your name?”
    â€œAva, Ava Levinsky,” she said, blushing slightly.
    â€œSo you see, Miss Ava Levinsky, I must go to America and tell this story to our people. They will see pictures of the camps, but they will never know the horrors like us few surviving Jews of Europe. The book is gone, but our people in America must know we did not all die like sheep, that some of us kept our pride. They must know of poor Isaac’s bravery and his book. Remember, he told me before I left him there next to Kleinmann’s body, ‘The world must know what happened in this place.’”
    And so was born the legend of Isaac Becker and the myth of The Book of Ghosts. The truth of it was something else altogether, but there was no one left to dispute Weisen’s version of history. The last member of his barracks died of typhus the day before the Red Army marched into the camp and none of the SS henchmen who managed to avoid justice or death in the aftermath of the war was apt to come forward to set the record straight. So Jacob Weisen was granted his wish and only a few months later had his new American life.
    Settled into a one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a Victorian house on Foster Avenue in Brooklyn, commuting to 32nd Street in the city where he worked as a cutter in the schmatte trade, the garment business, he might very well have lived out a quiet, productive life as a simple man. Maybe he would have taken a wife, had some children, but maybe not. To put more distance between himself and his past, he had begun to call himself Jack Wise and had even gone to a lawyer to start the process of legally changing his name. It all could have