Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (8 page)

—
the pogrom.

She picked up speed now, her hair flying in the wind. She
was just about to catch up with Schmarya, and could see that
he had nearly reached the edge of the forest. The hoofbeats
rang out much louder now, a steady, resounding bass pounding off the earth. She forced herself to speed up, as Schmarya was doing, for the final homestretch, and just as she reached
the extreme edge of the forest, Schmarya instinctively stopped in his tracks. Senda was about to shoot past him, but his right
arm shot out, slammed into her breasts, and sent her flying
backward through the air. She let out a cry, half in anger, half
in pain, as she landed heavily on the ground. 'What the—'

But Schmarya dived to the ground and clapped a hand over
her mouth.

The Cossacks burst past, sabres and rifles glinting evilly,
their sweating steeds throwing off glistening drops of hot
sweat, their powerful hooves tossing up clumps of dirt. They were very near, but the heavy forest underbrush completely
concealed Senda and Schmarya from the Cossacks while offer
ing them a bird's-eye view of the village.

The life seemed to drain out of Schmarya. His face was contorted in agony. 'We're too late,' he wept softly, covering
his face with his hands.

As they watched in horror, wholesale slaughter began; it
was as if the gates of hell had suddenly flung open, and bizarre
demons and devils were unleashed upon the earth.

The Cossacks wielded whips, guns, and sabres in their
black-leather-gloved hands, their huge fur hats pressing down
over their brows. They split into two groups, taking opposite
ends of the village and working bloody paths toward the centre.

What came was no battle. It was a massacre, pure and
simple—the systematic butchering of peaceful, unarmed vil
lagers by a horde of ruthless, bloodthirsty savages.

The first victims were Gilda Meyerov and her children. With
the Cossacks' arrival, Senda had seen Gilda rush out of the
nearest cottage, protectively gather up her three children who
had been playing outside, and herd them into the deceptive safety of the cottage, slamming and bolting the door behind them. When the cottage was set on fire, it was a matter of
minutes before Gilda and the children stumbled back out, gasping and coughing. The children were shot, and Gilda
Meyerov, frozen in horror, never saw the powerful arc of the
sabre that decapitated her. Her severed head flew through the
air and landed on the ground, bouncing twice before rolling
away like an obscene ball.

The tranquil village became a sea of blood. No one and
nothing was spared, whether human or otherwise. Senda had heard accounts of pogroms in the past, but they had always
seemed distant, only stories—something that happened to
other people. Nothing had prepared her for the horrors of the
reality. She witnessed her father being shot in the chest and
crumpling to the ground, then saw her screaming mother
throw herself atop his lifeless body, wailing and sobbing as she held his head in her hands, only to have her back hacked open
lengthwise by a Cossack leaning over his mount.

The slaughter took only a few minutes, but to Senda the
massacre seemed to last a lifetime. No matter in which direc
tion she looked, horror after unspeakable horror piled up
before her eyes.

She saw a gangly woman take flight from one of the burning
cottages, fleeing toward a shed which stood halfway between
her cottage and the forest. Her escape was cut off by two
Cossacks who galloped around her in ever-narrowing concen
tric circles until she fell and was trampled to death under the
iron-shod hooves of their horses. Senda shut her eyes. She had
recognized Hannah Jaffe, who lived in the cottage next door and was so proud of her cooking. She always brought her
neighbours a piece of cake when she baked one, or brought
over steaming pots of chicken soup if someone was ill. She
would never cook and bake again. The Cossacks had seen to
that.

Senda watched, heartbroken, as Solomon, the husband she
did not love, made a valiant attempt to rescue the sacred Torah
from the synagogue. When he ran out of the temple with the
scrolls tucked under his arm, a Cossack's whip expertly lashed
out, coiling itself around him and the scrolls. Totally immobi
lized, Solomon stood stock-still, eyes lifted skyward, as a band
of Cossacks hacked his body and the scrolls into bloody bits.
Senda grieved terribly for that one instant. So he had not been
a coward. He had died bravely, and she now felt shame for
the way she had treated him.

But soon that fragmented emotion was replaced by another,
for the most terrible sight of all now greeted her eyes. Her
beloved Grandmother Goldie, white-blond hair tied back, still
shod in the mules she wore indoors, socks too big for her
sagging around her ankles, came marching through ragged clouds of smoke down the one road which bisected the village,
her eyes narrowed in grim determination. All around Goldie,
the slaughter took place with furious speed and brutal
efficiency, but her pace never flagged. She was not one to
suffer death without a fight. Twice, once with her heart, and
another time with her liver, she had cheated the grim reaper,
and she wasn't about to stand still and wait for the Cossacks to finish the job. Not if she could help it. She held her boning
knife poised high in the air and headed straight for the nearest mounted Cossack, her stride never breaking. Before she could
reach him, he threw back his head and laughed, then reined in his horse, forcing its front legs high, and when they swiftly
descended, the hooves crushed Grandmother Goldie to the
ground as easily as other horses had crushed Hannah Jaffe.

Senda could bear no more. She was sickened by the viol
ence, the needless slaughter; repulsed by the devilish joy the Cossacks seemed to derive from it. And then, miraculously,
she saw an opportunity to try to help one person.

Despite her size, Aunt Sophie had avoided the slashing sabres on three occasions in as many minutes, and she was
racing as fast as her plump legs could carry her toward the
very bushes behind which Senda and Schmarya were hidden.
She was running breathlessly, her thick arms stretched out in
front of her, as though waiting for invisible hands to pull her.
When she caught sight of Senda parting the bushes and reach
ing out to her, hope gleamed in Sophie's eyes.

'Hurry!' Senda called encouragingly, her heart hammering
wildly. 'Hurry, Aunt Sophie!' And she prayed as the gap
between the two of them narrowed. '
Hurry!'

At that moment, a Cossack cut Aunt Sophie off and aimed
his rifle. Senda screamed as she heard the report. Aunt
Sophie's body seemed to jump into the air; her head snapped
backward. Her face was shattered, spraying everything
around her with fragments of tissue, bone, and blood. Senda
could feel warm drops of it raining down on her face and arms.

She squeezed her eyes shut, too shocked to scream any
longer. Numbly she allowed Schmarya to pull her back into
the shielding safety of the bushes. For several minutes she lay
there in white-faced shock. Then she heard Schmarya curse.

She turned to him and opened her eyes. 'What is it?' she
asked tremulously, afraid of the reply. She was afraid of so
many things suddenly.

Schmarya's face seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis. Whereas anguish had contorted it earlier, a silent,
seething rage was now burning.

'Schmarya . . .'

'They're not all Cossacks,' he muttered grimly. 'At least
one of them isn't.'

'What!'

'Look for yourself,' Schmarya whispered. 'It's the collector.
See? Over there, on the horse.'

Senda carefully parted the bushes and peered out. Until
Schmarya had pointed him out, she hadn't noticed Wolzak's
tax collector. Her attention had been focused on the massacre,
and the collector had been waiting quite some distance away
on a horse far inferior to those of the Cossacks. His back was
turned from the slaughter, as though by not watching it he
would be absolved of any moral responsibility. Only when the massacre was over and every building was burning furiously
did the leader of the Cossacks bellow for the collector. The
collector wasted no time; the huge burly bear of a Cossack inspired fear even in him. With his perpetually scowling expression, fierce moustache, bushy black beard, and fiery
eyes, the Cossack leader was enough to make anyone turn tail
and run. During the massacre, his black lamb hat had been
lost, and his glistening, frightfully smooth hairless skull threatened all who looked upon him, as did the massive raised white
welt of a scar which coursed down the left side of his face from
his brow to the corner of his mouth.

Senda turned to Schmarya. 'But what's the collector doing
here? There's nothing to collect.' Her voice was choked. 'Not
anymore, there isn't.'

'Yes, but he knows everyone in the village.'

Senda watched the collector. His conversation with the
leader of the Cossacks over, he swung down off his horse and
started walking among the corpses.

Senda frowned as she saw him consult a black ledger and
make a note of the victims. 'He's checking the dead against
some sort of list!'

'Don't you see?' Schmarya hissed. 'The collector knows
every man, woman, and child—even newborn babies—in this
village. His ledger lists everyone. Now he's taking inventory
of the dead.'

Senda shook her head. 'But . . . why? I don't understand.
If everyone has been butchered—'

'To make certain everyone's accounted for,' Schmarya said
grimly. 'Don't you see?
Everyone
is to have been killed. Every man, woman, and child in this village.' He shook his head in
disbelief.
'Everyone!
It was cold-bloodedly planned that way!'