Stalemate

by Icchokas Meras

  He opens the door and calls out, wanting to overshout the rattle of the engine:

  “I’d come to get you this evening. But I can’t. I really can’t.”

  Esther and I wave our hands and cannot understand why we’re wishing a safe trip to a German soldier.

  * * *

  —

  There are almost no people around. In the middle stretches the road, and on either side stand scattered houses, gardens, and meadows.

  Esther walks along one roadside ditch and I along the other. We think that Janek is lying in one of the ditches or else somewhere not far from the road. We walk a short distance, turn toward one another, and then glance in opposite directions. We walk past meadows and gardens, wade through spreading potato fields. I think she hasn’t looked everywhere, and she thinks I haven’t. We change places and look again, she on my side and I on hers.

  “Isia,” Esther says, “it’s a good thing that we’ve gone out to look, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say to her. “We couldn’t have done anything else.”

  “Do you understand what will happen,” Esther asks, “if we walk like this, walk and suddenly find Janek? Awful, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not awful at all—what are you saying?”

  “It’s awful…. Do you understand what will happen then? Oh, if only it would happen soon!”

  * * *

  —

  We stop at each peasant house long the way and talk to the people working in the fields. If we have to speak in Polish, Esther does the talking. If in Lithuanian, then I talk. But we often speak together, interrupting each other, and the people stare at us in amazement and sympathy.

  We knock timidly at the doors.

  They are usually opened by women.

  “Did you see two truckloads of people yesterday?”

  “There were so many such trucks, my child, so many.”

  “There was a boy on one, a light-haired boy.”

  “How could I see, my child?”

  “A young man by the name of Janek.”

  “Trucks passed by here. No doubt those two also passed. I didn’t see Janek.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t in the trucks? Maybe he walked around somewhere not far from here? Maybe he walked right past.”

  “No, he didn’t—we didn’t see.”

  We want to go on.

  Then they offer us food. I can’t understand why at each house we are offered food. The women hurry off somewhere and come back carrying bread wrapped in a towel. They run to the pantry and bring back milk in a clay jug.

  At each house we are offered food.

  We’re already full—we’ve eaten three times. But the women don’t know that; they hurry off somewhere, run to the pantry, bring bread and milk, and want us to sit at their tables, rest, and eat.

  * * *

  —

  We have to walk on and on.

  We eat and march forward.

  A woman wearing a white scarf walks with us.

  The sun has already rolled onto its other side, and we have to hurry, but we don’t want to hurry. There are two more house yards before the forest—here, closer, stands a large house with a tin roof and there, near the forest, a small cottage. Then we’ll have to go back. We can’t go any farther. Janek’s not there.

  Esther looks at the sun and then glances around.

  “Look,” she says. “Isia, look—flowers.”

  There really are flowers near the window. The stalks are tall, the blossoms large, and the leaves green.

  “Yes,” the woman says. “Those are my red peonies. I take good care of them, and they blossom beautifully every year, even now.”

  Esther stares strangely at the red peony blossoms, as if seeing them for the first time.

  The woman hurries.

  She hurries, just as the others hurried before her, carrying bread wrapped in a towel and a jug full of milk. In her hand she fumbles a small wooden-handled knife as she walks toward her windows. She picks and picks until she finds the most beautiful peony blossom with the straightest dark red petals.

  “Don’t!” Esther cries out. “Let it grow, don’t!”

  “Don’t,” I also say. “Our journey’s a long one and the flower will wither.”

  The woman doesn’t listen to us. She cuts down that most beautiful peony and gives it to Esther. Esther takes the flower, presses it to her cheek, touches the flower to my cheek, and then gives it back to the woman.

  “Put it into water,” she pleads. “Into a glass or a cup. Our journey’s a long one and the flower will surely wither. We still have to go to that other house, then to the cottage near the forest, and after that, home.”

  The woman takes the flower, says nothing, and looks at us with barely open eyes.

  “It would be better if you didn’t go there…. Don’t go to the house with the tin roof. You should go straight to the cottage near the forest.”

  We understand.

  “Thank you—thank you,” Esther says to the woman.

  The woman nods her head.

  We walk on.

  * * *

  —

  “Two trucks? With people?” we are asked.

  We nod.

  We are now in the last house, the cottage near the forest.

  “There were, there were,” the old woman says. “I saw.”

  “And a light-haired boy?”

  “Light-haired? There was, there was,” the old woman says.

  We wait. We wait….

  “Here, nearby,” the old woman says. “There was, there was…. A light-haired boy jumped out of the truck and after him a man, dark-haired. The trucks were moving quickly, very quickly. Those two men fell onto the road, and the Germans began to shoot and shot them both. The trucks stopped a little way up, a soldier walked over, pushed them into the ditch, and they drove away. There was, there was…. Was that light-haired boy your brother? We were afraid to look at first, the times being what they are. But at night some of the men went over but didn’t find them. Seems somebody took them away. There was, there was, children.”

  What can we say? What can we ask?

  “Come in, come in,” the old woman says. “Sit down at the table, rest, eat. What God has given us, travelers can have to strengthen themselves. Come in, come in.”

  The old woman fusses, fixes her scarf. Her chin quivers all the time, probably because of her age.

  “Come in—don’t refuse, children….”

  We cannot go in. We cannot sit at her table, rest, or eat the black bread and drink the white milk.

  It’s time for us to go home.

  Now is the time for us to go back to the ghetto.

  Farther on is the forest, and we can’t go there. Our journey has ended. There is no reason to go on now. Now we know everything.

  It’s time to go home. It’s time.

  * * *

  —

  We walk down the dusty road to the city. The road is long, stretches into the distance, and is always the same.

  What is Esther thinking about now?

  I don’t know….

  I don’t know what I myself am thinking.

  The street begins. It too is long, and it too stretches into the distance. A group of children catches up with us—three boys and two girls. They’re all carrying baskets, bags, and sacks. They must be returning from the village where they got food. They hurry and pass us, but one girl turns around all the time, looks at us, and then says something to her friends They stop and wait.

  “Are you from the village?” the girl asks.

  “No, not from the village.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “We were looking for our friend Janek.”

  She doesn’t ask anything else, because she sees that there are
only two of us and that we didn’t find Janek.

  “They took him away yesterday,” Esther says in a muffled voice.

  I understand that it’s hard for her to keep quiet and that she explains because she needs to utter a few words out loud and hear her own voice.

  “Come with us,” the girl says. “It’s more fun together.”

  “No, we have very far to go,” I say.

  And I explain that we have to turn right there, to the left there, and then go straight.

  “Oh!” the girl says. “It’s just on our way! Right to the narrow street.”

  She looks at her friends, and they silently affirm: yes, to that street.

  We are in the middle of the group, and we walk on together.

  It is better for us that people’s voices ring out around us.

  * * *

  —

  The space behind the gates.

  This is where we have to wait.

  The group walked with us to this space and then turned back. I wonder if it was on their way.

  We hide behind one side of the gates. No one will see us here. We find our needles and thread and sew the yellow patches back onto our jackets.

  The columns will soon pass by here; we’ll sneak in among them, and we’ll go home.

  Time passes very slowly, but it wouldn’t be so hard for us to wait if we didn’t hear someone moaning. Someone is moaning nearby, somewhere, and it seems to us it’s Janek.

  The Thirty-Ninth Move

  • 1 •

  Schoger fortified the right flank.

  “How idyllic….” he sighed.

  Without waiting for a response, he added, “That’s right, idyllic…. All around it’s dark and only our chessboard is illuminated. Like a campfire. Imagine that we’re shepherds in the Tyrol and that the chess pieces are our flock. We herd the flock, sit around the campfire. Someone, somewhere in the distance, blows the reed-fifes, and I sing Tyrolean songs. Hey! That’s the life, right?”

  Schoger straightened his back, leaned against his chair, tilted his head, put his hands on his sides, and began to sing a guttural Tyrolean song “Lia-lio-li-liuuu…. Lia-lio-li-liuuu….”

  Then he leaned over the chessboard, looked at his opponent, and laughed.

  The evening was clear, blue, like a translucent sheet of gray-blue glass. The sun had elongated all the shadows, which stretched into the night. The stars would be out soon—millions of many-colored distant tiny lights. There was stone beneath their feet, hard and as long-lived as rock, and somewhere nearby a light wind rattled a window shutter.

  Everything seemed so mysterious.

  But in that secret silence of night were people. There were small carbide lanterns, in the center—a chessboard, chess pieces, unliving figures—and two other figures sitting across from one another, Isaac Lipman and Adolf Schoger.

  The unliving figures were made of wood.

  The living figures battled.

  • 2 •

  “I begat a daughter, Riva,” said Abraham Lipman.

  • 3 •

  For an entire month—thirty days—they lived together in this tiny house near the bend of the shallow brook at the edge of the garden. The house was very small, only an entrance hall and one tiny room. Because the road was so far away, no one came here and no one without reason poked his nose through the door. In the room were a table, a dresser, and two beds. They slept with their clothes on, the way soldiers slept at the front. They pretended not to notice, and perhaps they really didn’t notice, that he was a man and she was a woman.

  Antanas walked through the spreading plot of grass, which glowed dully with the embers of the coming sunrise, and was happy that before him curved a narrow path. The trail through the grass was fresh, and Antanas smiled as he looked at the clean, as if washed, stalks and bent, dewless leaves of grass that indicated that she had just walked past.

  He walked softly, lifting his legs high and looking around.

  He stepped carefully across the entrance hall’s threshold, bolted the door, and leaned the old wooden dresser against it.

  Right there, in the hall, he took off his shoes, hung up his damp socks to dry, and on his tiptoes walked into the room. Riva was already sleeping. She always slept with her lips pursed and her hands tucked beneath her head. Antanas was always amused when he saw the way she slept.

  He stretched and lifted the thin blanket: he wanted to lie down, but Riva slept so soundly that he suddenly became uneasy.

  There were two windows in the room—one facing the brook, the other facing the garden. He parted the shutters, which opened from the inside, and immediately saw the Germans. Walking hunched over, in a large circle, they were surrounding the house. He slammed one shutter shut and ran to the other, but there, too, he saw part of the large surrounding circle of hunched Germans.

  “Riva! Riva!” he cried out.

  She woke up and understood immediately.

  She had known that it would happen. They had both known and were always prepared. They were not surprised that this was finally happening, though they had also always secretly believed that perhaps nothing would happen, that it didn’t always have to end this way. They had not believed that it would happen so quickly—though it really wasn’t all that soon, because they’d lived in this small house near the banks of the brook for an entire month, thirty days, and no one had bothered them during all that time.

  Each knelt near one of the windows, near the shutters, which had long ago rotted in spots: they began their wait.

  They each had a machine gun with seven cartridge clips, a revolver, and one grenade. Yesterday they had had many grenades, but last night they had given them to their friends in the ghetto. There, in the ghetto, the people needed many grenades, and Riva and Antanas couldn’t keep too many for themselves out here.

  They waited until the Germans had come close enough and then together began to shoot.

  If only they don’t go to the side where there are no windows, Riva thought. If only they don’t climb onto the roof.

  Antanas glanced at Riva as she pressed near the window crack and thought, If they climb onto the roof and tear through the ceiling, we won’t be able to do anything. Everything will be over quickly. Very quickly.

  The Germans got up, and the two in the house were able to shoot again. They fired and were happy that the Germans couldn’t see them and that they could see the Germans.

  The battle lasted a long time.

  When the Germans got up again, they both opened the windows briefly, threw their grenades, and slammed the rotting shutters.

  Then the Germans pulled back. They had no reason to hurry. They didn’t even try to climb onto the roof. They pulled back a long way and sat down to smoke. The house was still in the middle of their circle, and no one in it could get out.

  Riva and Antanas also sat down. They, too, had to rest. They sat down on the floor, leaned against the walls, looked at each other, and then, at times, looked through the window cracks to see if the Germans were coming again. But the Germans were in no hurry. Occasionally they fired single shots at the windows. Their bullets had already knocked out the glass and now drilled past the wooden frames, tearing the shutters. Riva and Antanas were not afraid of them. The Germans were playing, and the two in the house were able to rest.

  Do you know what I’m thinking now? Riva asked in her thoughts as she looked at the man sitting in front of her. I think that we are still complete strangers. I don’t even know your last name, and you don’t know mine.

  And Antanas said to himself, without taking his eyes from the face of the woman sitting across from him, I want you to think about me. If you knew what I wanted you’d surely think about me. It’s hard to believe; it’s funny—we’ve lived together for an entire month, for thirty days, and you don’t know my last name, and I don’t know yours. You don’t k
now if Antanas is really my name. And I don’t know if you are really Riva….

  “My name’s Lipman. Riva Lipman,” she said loudly.

  He smiled and said, “I’m Jankauskas. Antanas Jankauskas.”

  A bullet whizzed through her window, buzzed like a bee, and scattered a handful of wood chips into his face. They both shuddered. Then Antanas shook himself and smiled, but it was a sad smile, and Riva thought:

  We’re making a mistake even though we don’t have the right to make mistakes. We should have gone somewhere else, because we knew this would happen someday. We made a big mistake. We also made a mistake, it seems, if they found out that we have been living here. Others will find out later, but for the time being we sit here across from one another and don’t know where, when, or how we made that mistake.

  Antanas thought, If they had waited three more days, they wouldn’t have found us here. We would have lived peacefully on the other side of the city and, together with some of the other young people, would have continued our nightly operations.

  “Will our people be able to get to the forest quickly?” she asked.

  “Abba suggests that the children be brought out first.”

  “But there are many weapons in the ghetto already.”

  “But still, not everyone will be taken out at the same time. The forest has to be conquered. You can’t have a partisan movement based in a few mud huts. Understand? And of course, the ghetto has to be protected. It’s hard for them. It’s too hard for them. If Mitenberg were there, it would be easier.”

  “Yes, if Mitenberg were there….”

  Remembering Hirsch Mitenberg she curled up into a ball. She didn’t want to remember, but she remembered.

  He had been grabbed in the ghetto but had managed to break away and hide. They had searched for him in all the side streets, in all the houses, but had not found him.

  Then Schoger had called out a unit of his men, surrounded the ghetto, and said, “If Mitenberg does not appear, I’ll destroy the ghetto.”