by Chaim Potok
“What are those things on the walls inside the cave?”
“You must not go near them. They are the spirits of the cave.”
The boy shivered. After a moment he asked, “Will the man live or die?”
She said impassively, “He will die.”
The boy glanced at the cart and then lowered his eyes.
“There is a small stream on the other side of that clump of brush,” the woman said. “Between the brush and that line of boulders. But it is entirely frozen and there are no fish in it. Even the banks are frozen.”
“What will we eat?” the boy asked.
“There will be something. Under a rock or in the earth. I will find something.” And she set about making a fire.
She put water on to boil and was gone awhile from the cave and returned with things in her closed hands and made a soup of some kind and afterward she and the boy worked a long time gathering brushwood and piling it in front of the cave, leaving enough space between the brushwood and the cave for the firepit but effectively concealing its mouth. Then the woman tried again to feed the old man but he could not keep down the food. She squatted by the fire with a quilt over her shoulders staring into the flames and listening to the soft moans that came to her from the cart.
The boy wandered off in the direction of the stream and found it a few yards beyond the mouth of the cave: a narrow cleft of solidly frozen water that ran from a line of tall boulders at the base of the mountain wall and disappeared into an impenetrable clump of thornbushes. Here the morning sun was concealed by an outcropping on the mountain across the valley and though the wind had died the boy shivered in the shadowy air.
He approached the mountain wall and found he could slip through the crevice that lay between two of the boulders. Prickly frozen snow covered their surfaces and scratched his hands. Almost to the other side, he bumped his chest and gasped at the stab of pain that ran through him from the point of the wound. He placed a finger over the tear on his jacket and gently pressed down and felt the pain in his neck and head and deep into his chest. It is almost like the first day of the wound. How can that be? Then he forgot the wound, because he had found the point where the stream entered the valley: an ice-covered pool like a small pond at the very base of the mountain wall, not more than a hundred feet from the mouth of the cave.
He looked around carefully and waited, listening. Was that the beating of his heart or was there in the distance the thunder of war? No, it was his heart drumming and thundering in his ears and causing the strange pulsing of the wound. He shivered and approached the edge of the pond and squatted beside it and looked down at its surface of ice that glinted white in the shadow of the mountain. With trembling hands he cleared the snow from an area near the edge of the pond and found a large sharp-edged stone. He held the stone in both hands and stepped carefully onto the ice, which held firm.
He moved cautiously to the center of the pond, where he squatted and began to chip at the ice with the stone.
Thicker than he had thought at first; it took a while to break through.
The coldness of the water stung his fingers and sent a shock through him. His teeth chattered. He could see the pale gelid flow beneath the ice: half-frozen liquid like a thick gray-green soup through which moved sluggishly a nearly dormant six-inch-long silvery fish.
He chipped at the edges, widening the hole. All the time he worked he felt the throbbing of the wound.
Near the pond was a clump of brush. He broke off a long thickish branch and, hacking at it with the stone, managed to split one end, which he then separated into two prongs for the length of about three inches. This he took to the edge of the hole, where he squatted and waited.
A thin silvery fish slid slowly into view, carried more by the tiny eddies of the pond than by its own motions, and the boy speared it deftly and left it beside him flopping about on the ice and then quickly speared two more. He picked up the fish and, holding them still alive in his hands, turned to start back to the cave and found himself facing three dogs.
They stood between him and the boulders. Two large dogs and one small one. Long-nosed, brown-haired, red-tongued, hungry.
The boy, more startled than frightened, remained very still. The dogs did not move. He could hear their short rapid breathing. After a moment he scraped snow from the ground with his shoes and found some small stones which he tossed at them. They dodged the stones agilely but did not move from the boulders.
The boy held one of the fish over his head and one of the big dogs barked and started toward him. The boy threw the fish as far as he could, feeling as he did a tearing pain in his chest, and the dogs scampered after it. He made his way between the boulders and returned to the cave.
He gave the remaining two fish to the woman, who took them from him without a word. She put snow into a pot and brought it to a boil. She did not clean the fish but put them whole into the boiling water.
The boy squatted by the fire and thought of the small dog on the other side of the boulders. He is not like my Badooki; he has only one color. But he is the same size. Is the spirit of Grandfather speaking to me through that little dog?
The woman let the soup cook a long time and then she and the boy ate it as a hot jelly. But the old man would not eat.
In the late afternoon the woman said matter-of-factly to the boy as she squatted in the mouth of the cave, “We will wait until he dies and then we will cover him with stones in the cave.”
The boy said, “But the dogs.”
The woman said after a moment, “The spirits of the cave will care for him.”
“And what will happen to us?”
“We will go through the valley and the mountains and try to find the camp for refugees.”
The boy raised his eyes and looked out at the narrow valley. “And if there is a snowstorm on the way?”
“The spirits of our ancestors will not abandon us.”
The boy squatted in the mouth of the cave watching the sun disappear behind the mountains and deep shadows gliding across the valley floor. Then he looked in the direction of the stream and there was the smallest of the three dogs standing near the dense growth of thornbush and gazing at him, red tongue hanging from its mouth, tail slowly wagging. A small lean brown part-shepherd dog. The boy could not see the other two dogs. Perhaps they cannot come between the boulders. Am I thinner than those dogs? Only the little one can get through?
The fire had burned down to a bed of reddish-gray ash. The boy looked into the pot. About an inch of the jellied soup remained in it: what the old man would not eat.
Squatting near the mouth of the cave, the old woman watched without a word as the boy took the pot and left it about ten feet in front of the dog and returned to the cave.
The dog approached cautiously, backed away, came forward again, warily sniffed the pot, buried its nose in it, withdrew a few feet, looked around, loped back to the pot, and, knocking it over on its side, swiftly devoured its contents. Then it barked twice and turned and ran toward the boulders and disappeared.
The boy cleaned the pot with snow and returned it to the firepit.
Before dark he went back to the pond and caught four fish. The three dogs were there again and the two large ones scampered after the fish he threw them. The little one remained behind and he tossed it a fish, which it deftly caught in its mouth and began immediately to devour.
The boy gave the two remaining fish to the woman, who buried them deep in the snow outside the mouth of the cave and in the morning once again cooked them to a hot jelly which she and the boy ate. She held up the head of the old man and tried to force the food into him but he spat it up and moaned. His eyes were red and dry with the fever. She melted snow in a separate pot and some of that he drank.
“He will die tomorrow or the day after,” she said later to the boy as they squatted near the fire. “How strange. I thought the spirits would take me first.”
The boy responded with an odd choking sound.
/> The woman turned to look at him.
“My head,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Hurts.”
“Where?”
He began to raise a hand, and stopped. His face was strangely flushed. The woman saw him fall slowly sideways from his squatting position, pupils rolling into his upper lids and only the whites of his eyes showing. He lay near the fire in a dead faint.
Trembling, she washed his face with water from the pot. He is burning with fever. From what? The boy opened his eyes and moaned.
“Head,” he whimpered. “Head.”
She carried him to the place in the cave where the quilts lay. As she spread the quilts over him she brushed against his chest and he stiffened and cried out. Gently she opened his torn coat and wadded jacket and shirt and undershirt and searched for the wound.
She saw it with a shock. Under the right clavicle. Red and puckered and jagged. A foul sickly-sweet odor rising from it. Red streaks radiating from the lips of the wound, and parts of the wound whitish gray and crusty. She pressed gently with her fingers along the ridge of the wound: gray-white gelid fluid spurted through, a thin jet nearly striking her face.
She looked in horror at the wound and put her hand on the boy’s chest. It seemed on fire.
She covered the boy and bathed his face again. He moaned and talked incoherently of the pond near his village turning into a river and Badooki lost in the forest and becoming a small red bird and his grandfather lying in a field of grass gazing through his spectacles at a flying gray mouse-shaped furry spirit. She put more brushwood on the fire and squatted near the flames, a quilt over her shoulders.
She thought: Now both will certainly die and this cave will be their grave. And I will die here too, but for me there will be no stones. The man wanted me to send the boy away and now they will lie here together. Somewhere there is great laughter among the spirits.
She felt too weary to be angry. She did not know what to do.
All that night she kept the fire burning and bathed alternately the faces of the boy and the old man. If there are spirits of kindness left anywhere in this war let them find this cave. Let them find these mountains and this valley and this old woman who makes a promise of many offerings to any spirits who find this cave and heal the boy and the man. These words she said to herself again and again. On occasion as she moved back and forth from the fire to the boy and the man, murmuring the words aloud, there came from deep inside the cave the flutter of wings and the tiny movements of small hairy forms.
At dawn she left the cave and found the space between the boulders and barely managed to edge her way through. Between the boulders and the base of the mountain the air seemed colder than it did near the cave. The surface of the hole in the pond had iced over during the night and she chipped at it, using the stone left there by the boy. With his wooden tool she caught five fish. When she rose wearily to her feet she found herself besieged by the three dogs.
The boy had told her of the dogs.
She walked slowly toward them, speaking softly, and when one of them growled she raised one of the fish high and let them see it and then tossed it far away. The two large dogs barked and raced off after it but the little one remained in its place. She tossed it a fish, which it caught and began to eat. Then she returned to the cave.
She was trying to feed the boy when she heard a noise from the mouth of the cave and looked up and saw the little dog as a silhouette in the morning light. The boy, semi-conscious, saw the dog too and called out strange words the woman did not understand. She poured some of the soup into a small pot and left it at the mouth of the cave and the dog ate quickly and then sat on its haunches watching the woman. When the woman went to put more brushwood on the fire the dog ambled over to the boy and sniffed him. She watched the dog sniffing the boy’s head and chest, its tail wagging. It barked once and the sound went ringing through the cave and there was a brief fluttering of wings and then silence. The dog lay down next to the boy outside the quilts. The woman sat by the fire exhausted and fell asleep.
When she woke the dog was still on the floor of the cave, its long nose nuzzled against the boy’s chest. She looked at the dog and shivered. Something. Some dim memory.
The man moaned. She helped him from the cart and supported him as he squatted outside. The sun shone bright on the snow. She gazed out at the mountains and the valley. No people. No soldiers. Where was the war? Had she and the man and the boy wandered from the earth into a world of spirits? If we are in a world of spirits they will either kill us all or help us all. Or are the spirits fighting among themselves over us? Do those who wish to help us need our help to succeed?
The man groaned. He could not walk without her help. There was little left of him but bones. She brought him into the cave and helped him onto the cart. If there are spirits who need help, how can I help them?
She remembered then once in her childhood watching the village sorceress tend to a neighbor, an old woman. This memory surprised her, because she could not recall ever having thought it before, and with a tremor of fear she found herself thinking it had been sent to her now by a spirit.
She took clay from the floor of the cave and put it into a pot and heated it dry and with a round stone ground it into a fine powder. She poured hot water over it and brought it to the old man and tried feeding it to him. He would not take it but this time she poured it into his mouth and held him as he choked and gagged, and some of it he spat out and some of it he kept down.
She then went to the boy and bathed his face and lifted his jacket and shirt to look again at the wound. The stench from it made her gag. But the dog, who had slunk away when the woman had come over to the boy, now reappeared and the woman smelled its heat and watched in surprise as it put its mouth to the boy’s chest and sent its smooth wet red tongue darting forward in a few brief tentative licks at the wound.
The boy suddenly opened his eyes and moaned and pushed at the dog’s head. The dog retreated but a moment later was back and its red tongue licked hungrily at the suppurating wound.
The boy lay very still, his eyes partially open and only the whites showing.
The woman looked at the jagged hot cleansed wound and covered the boy and spoke softly to the dog, who lay down beside the boy.
She squatted by the fire, dozing and dreaming. In one of her dreams she was sailing high into the air on her swing and then suddenly falling and a dog licked at her bleeding leg. She woke. It seemed to her she had been asleep only minutes but the sun was almost to the western mountains. She rose and ground clay and fed it in a soup to the man and then uncovered the boy’s wound, which was oozing pus again, and watched as the dog licked it clean. She went to the pond and brought back three more fish, after feeding one to the two dogs. A second she threw to the small dog and with the remaining two she made another soup. Then she bathed the man’s face and fed him hot water and clay, and bathed the boy and fed him hot jellied soup, and once again let the dog cleanse the wound.
She slept that night on one side of the boy and the dog slept on the other side, on the floor beside the quilts, and all through her sleep it seemed to her she heard the sighs and flutters of the spirits of the cave.
The next day she did the same things she had done the day before; and again the following day.
On the morning of the fourth day she looked at the boy’s wound and saw the swelling was gone and it was clean. The boy lay cool and deep in sleep, the dog beside him. The man sat up in the cart and weakly demanded food. She fed him the jellied soup and afterward he lay back and slept. She thought fearfully: This is a place filled with the power of healing spirits. I will walk carefully and be silent.
In the afternoon she returned to the pond and after feeding the two dogs brought back three fish, one of which she gave to the little dog. She cooked a soup and offered it to the spirits of the cave and after a while fed it to the man and the boy and then ate of it herself.
The fevers were gone from bo
th the old man and the boy but both were skeletal and could barely stand without the help of the woman. The boy lay on the ground beneath the quilts and hugged the dog to himself in his sleep and the man lay on the cart staring at the valley and trying to remember how he had got to the cave.
“From where are the fish?” he asked the woman.
She told him. He glanced in surprise at the boy.
“And the dog?”
She told him that too.
“We cannot live in this cave forever,” he said.
“First get back your strength.”
“We need meat,” he said.
She did not respond.
“We need meat, woman,” he repeated.
She got up and walked out of the cave. He stared at her and lay back and closed his eyes.
The next morning two jet fighters flew over the valley and the boom of their supersonic speed reverberated through the mountains and stirred the creatures on the walls of the cave. They went fluttering and chittering through the air. The dog scampered off and the old man and the woman and the boy left the cave and sat in the sunlight.
After a while the woman got to her feet. “I will bring back some fish.”
“We need meat,” the old man said angrily.
She went off toward the boulders.
The old man sat with his face in the sunlight. He had not thought he would ever see sunlight again. The woman could not have done this without the boy. How strange the way the dog healed the boy’s wound. Once I heard something like that. A dog licked to health a sword wound that would not heal. In the time of the Japanese. The carpenter told me that story.
The boy opened his eyes and, squinting in the sunlight, saw the old man looking at him. His heart raced and he turned quickly away. How he dislikes me. I see it. Why? The old man fidgeted with annoyance. There is something about this boy something and yet see how he helped the woman and knew to catch the fish and brought in the dog. Ah, my arms and legs. The sickness has made me into water I can hardly move I am like the woman after she bore the child and could not move and the wetnurse had to take him. We fed her light seaweed cooked in water and sesame oil, I remember. And later I bought some meat at great cost to feed her and bring her to her feet. See how the boy sits looking into the sun. His skin so thin I can see through it to his pulsing blood. Blue veins along his cheeks and on the side of his head. Smooth delicate papery skin. The son of scholars and poets. And landowners too, no doubt. The rich. No surprise the fiends from the North killed them all. They drink our blood, the landowners. But what does the boy know of such matters? He is a child. Still. Scholars and poets, and in the service of kings and emperors. If we are overtaken by those fiends from the North and they find us with this boy they will kill us all.