The Night Archer

by Michael Oren

  Fury, embarrassment, disgust—how can I describe the sensations? At that moment, watching my father’s hands press Mrs. Vilkas’ breasts, I see it all. The Sabbaths when my father sneaks off while we’re in shul and her husband is busy cleaving pigs’ heads. I see the two of them, handsome and vital, and then my mother, formlessly gray, her features as drab as her dresses. I can feel their passion and feel her pain but also a kind of power. As if the forest were inside me, suddenly. The treetops nodding approval and the birds singing in praise. The silent applause of butterflies.

  But the quiet is broken by thunder. Giant planes roar overhead, blocking the sluices of light. My father and Mrs. Vilkas look up at the sky and then at one another, exchange troubled faces, and hurry back to town. I remain scrunched behind the birch, though, skinny still but enormous with knowledge.

  It’s times like this that I picture myself as Dalia, who we learned about in the state school where my father sends me. Dalia, the pagan goddess of fate, and Perkunas, the thunder god, their terrible faces carved into wood. So different from the God my mother prays to. The invisible God who she says inhabits not only our yellow concrete shul but the entire world. I listen to her, but I cannot agree. God may be in Aniksht, perhaps even in our house, but not out here, in the forest. Here, I am Dalia, empress of my own fate, and the thunder is my husband.

  I am a strange little girl, I know. No friends, really, a loner in school. But I’d rather be strange in a town where hatred is normal. And I prefer to feel normal in the forest soothed by the scent of birch mulch and surrounded by zebra-like bark.

  I come here more and more as things grow worse at home. Not only between my parents but between our people and the town. Foreigners come and go, come and stay, and soon we are confined inside. My mother cannot pray, and my father cannot sneak through the backyards to Mrs. Vilkas’. Only I manage to escape. Nobody notices the plain skinny girl scurrying across the main square and tiptoeing past my father’s shuttered office.

  From there, keeping off the roads where the soldiers travel, I cross the wheat fields and enter the burnt-out village where my father’s family used to live. Here, in basements, they once hid from the Cossacks—so my father told me. And here, his mother died shortly after giving birth to him. The shul still stands but boarded up, and I’m half-inclined to peek inside, to see where my grandfather went crazy. But instead I keep running. Just beyond the village, the forest lies.

  Safely within, I wander for hours thinking, why not just stay? With little need for food and now, in summertime, for shelter, I could make my own home out of bark. No arguments, no dangers, only me and the butterflies and the birds. I truly could become like Dalia, deciding how and where to live. And never fear the thunder.

  Nor would I fear the clacking sound, like angrily snapped branches, echoing through the trees. I follow the noise, crouching behind trunks, until I see them. A few soldiers but many townspeople. Workers, teachers, illiterate farmers—people my father helped, but also the butcher, Mr. Vilkas. They are shoving my people up to the edge of a big ditch, pressing what look like sticks to their backs and watching them fall inside. They fall and then I hear that clacking. They fall and a mist remains, blue and bloody red, colors unknown to the forest.

  How long do I watch—hours? Too afraid to move, too knowing. So it’s hardly surprising when I see my father and mother, side-by-side, my mother clutching Emmanuel, pushed up to the lip of the ditch. There is no more arguing, no more crying—even Emmanuel is still—no books or prayers, God or truth. They just stand there for an endless second, my mother pale and my father looking insulted, both of them gazing into the forest as if in search of hope. In search of me. And though I so want to, I cannot run to them, cannot join and hug them.

  They fall, finally, and others take their place. The soldiers are quiet, work-like, but the townspeople are excited. Drinking, swearing, laughing. Their cheers drown out the screams. I know that I will hear them always, even in the deepest silence. Or especially. I know that I will always see the red and the blue and smell that stench, like ammonia, tainting the mulch.

  The afternoon is ending. Shadows fall across the treetops and filter down to the pit. I’ve never been in the forest at night but the thought of it somehow comforts me. I have been crying for so long, stifling my sobs with a forearm. The soldiers, the townspeople are gone. I am alone. The bark turns black, the birds are silent. My shoes soundlessly sink into moss. I flee deeper into the forest, as if into a loving embrace. The butterflies, their wings damp with darkness, wave goodbye.

  * * * * *

  The stalks of wheat, like grateful subjects, bow to her as she runs. Her hair streaming behind her, honeyed, her taffeta gown aglow. Azure eyed, pixie nosed and chinned. In the summer light, burnt around the edges, she is framed and gilded. And she laughs, roaring with each bound, as I chase her. Uselessly, for I know she’s impossible to catch. No matter. It’s enough just to follow in her sweet stream, the scent of lavender from her bath, the creams of her skin, intoxicating me. An occasional glimpse of ear or a naked raised heel as blinding as any revelation. So she runs, and I stumble after her. Goddess and mortal, worshipped and smitten, dream and relentless reality.

  Yet, miraculously, the distance shrivels. My hand—ink-stained, bony—reaches out for hers and nearly glances it. “Malki,” I cry, “my queen,” and the church bells in the distant town sing out to her from sharpened silver spires. “Malki,” I lunge, tripping over an undone lace in my hand-me-down shoes, swimming in clothes my body can no longer fill. But all she does is giggle. Running still, weightless, toward the village and the wooden houses that seem to float atop the wheat. At any moment I feel she will fling her arms airward and soar. And I will be left land-bound, gazing up and gasping, her near-touch enough to scorch my fingers.

  The wind shrieks through the worm-eaten slats of the shul where Mendel writes by candlelight. Night times such as this, when he’s supposed to be studying Gemara, he can scribble for hours, until either his ink or his candle runs out. At which points he writes still, in his mind, stroking his beard and payos. Only when the hour is so late the entire shtetl is sleeping, does he groan to his feet and stretch. Behind the Torah ark, safe in the darkness and dust, he hides the manuscript. Then, clutching his coat shreds and donning a threadbare shtreimel, he stumbles out into the drizzle. Into vapors of cowsheds and death.

  He trundles down a muck-paved alley, past sighs and wheezes seeping through doors. At the end, he turns into a narrower lane yet, feeling his way along splintered walls and fences, counting the steps. A rodent scurries across his shoes. Finally, Mendel senses the hinge and lifts it. Familiar smells—grease, borax, tallow—envelope him.

  “Iz das dir,” comes a flimsy voice from the bed.

  “Yo, es is mir,” he replies. “Zikher in shtub.” Safe at home.

  In the shadows, a thicker shadow, convex, rising and falling. Mendel pats it as he sits on the side of the bed and then reaches for her forehead. He can see it glistening, even at night, and knows that her fever rages.

  “Vos azoy shpet?” Why does he have to study so late, she wants to know. More of a cry than a question, and she weeps it often alone. Of course, he has answers. Most frequently: that is what Ribonu shel HaOlam, the Universal Sovereign, wants from him, what Hakoidesh Baruch Hu, the Holy One of Blessed Name, expects. Other times, especially when he is also sick, the response is more candid.

  “What else can I do?” Mendel is not a carpenter, not proficient in any trade, a businessman certainly not. All he can do is read the sacred texts or at least appear to. What he can really do, though only secretly, is write stories. Stories! As if he could feed a family with them, provide a roof that didn’t leak or even kindling for a fire. The editor of Kol Mevaser rejected them, explaining in a terse note that the author’s prose, “though vivid,” was “too fantastical, too disconnected from real shtetl life.” From which life, he wanted to know. This one, with its illness and poverty, its fears and filth? Did anybody tr
uly want to read about that, much less write about it?

  “Kenen makhn ir epes?” He offers to make her tea, but Rayna shakes her head. She only wants to sleep and guard this baby, the only one she’s taken to term. How he will pay for it, he has no idea, with the few kopecks he receives from the kollel. But Rayna, plain, warted, skin-and-bones Rayna, never asks for anything for herself. Never demands that he get a real job, that he give up the stories that she somehow knows he writes but never once mentions. A child—that is the least he could give her. An infant to dote on and protect.

  Mendel undresses and puts on a nightshirt, blows on the oven’s embers but merely worries the ash. Lying next to Rayna but not too close—she needs her heat—he tries to drift off. His eyes shut but his mind’s as open as a wheat field in summer. It’s warm inside his head and the sun is dazzling.

  * * * * *

  Kite-like, heron-like, she flies. Over the rooftops with their challah braids of smoke. Over the sheds where horned heads rise in awe. Some of them will be summoned, goats and cows joining her in a graceful swirl over the village.

  You see, Malki when she wills can make anything weightless. The sky is her kingdom and there she holds sway. A peasant can fly if she wishes him to, a fiddler. Only I am left to wince upward, shielding my sight with hands almost too feeble to lift. It’s enough just to witness her, to behold her homespun glory.

  “Queen Malki, I swear fidelity to you!” I shout and my words, at least, take flight. “I swear devotion and wonder and love!” But laughter is again my only answer. Indulgent laughter, such as a mother’s for an unruly child or an eagle’s for the wingless.

  “Malki,” I wail and flap arms as frail as bird bones, plumed with rags but incapable of lifting. Is it enough for me, I ask, just to watch and idolize? Can I survive by adoring below?

  * * * * *

  A monstrous rapping on the door shakes the entire house. “Gey aroyse!?” somebody hollers in Yiddish and then, to underline the danger, in Hebrew, “Hahuzah!” Half or wholly asleep, he’s uncertain, but summer has been ousted by desolate winter in the golden wheat field by the tatters of their bed.

  “Rayna,” Mendel shakes her. “Rayna, get up. I think we’re under attack.”

  It’s his wife who’s still dreaming and probably of Cossacks as she matter-of-factly repeats, “Yes, attack.” Still not quite awake, she allows him to throw a shawl across her shoulders and to help her onto swollen feet. Then, Mendel leads her, barefoot, across the earthen floor and out into ice-tipped rain. Over the wind, he hears other cries of “gey aroyse” and “hahuza,” more pounding of doors. There is screaming and praying but also a different sound—distant but rapidly closing in. Hooves.

  “Geshvind!” Their neighbor, Lilienblum, urges them to hurry. A flour merchant, rich, he would probably ignore them if not for Rayna’s state. Abandoning a pregnant woman brings on the Evil Eye, they say. So Lilienblum leads them through a kitchen lit by kerosene and into a pantry fat with provisions, back to a half-hidden iron door. “Geyn. Geyn,” he orders them, holding a lamp over the steps.

  They descend into a basement which, though frosty, is drier than the air outside. The mustiness is less offensive than the shtetl’s usual stench, and even the darkness is somehow comforting. The basement is made of brick, with stylish arches. “Who but Jews would decorate a shelter?” Mendel thinks.

  Long minutes pass. Mendel holds Rayna and Rayna cradles her stomach. Lilienblum’s family, his big-boned wife and overstuffed kids, are with them, too, insulating. They share some biscuits—his first bite, Mendel remembers, in days. He saves all the food for Rayna. The mood is relaxed, almost familial, but then, “Sha!” somebody hisses. The thud of horseshoes on frozen mud, clanging spurs and stirrups, thunders overhead.

  Shots blast out, a scream, and someone starting to chant, “Shma Yisroel Adonoy Eloheinu…” but not finishing. Lilienblum waits a full hour, long after the storm passes, before hazarding up the stairs. He returns, clay-faced, and informs them quietly. The Cossacks are gone.

  Outside, the village is shrouded in smoke. Cows, chickens, children wail. People stumble past, seemingly asleep. Mendel helps Rayna across the frozen ruts, holding her head to his neck so that she won’t see the rivulets of blood. Though many houses have been burned, theirs is untouched, perhaps because it resembles a privy. He guides her inside and tucks her back into bed.

  “Vau geystu?” she asks, though she already knows the answer. He’ll return to the shul, to studying, because that’s what Hakoidesh Baruch Hu wants. Rayna nods in understanding but her dull eyes beg: what about me?

  Mendel pets her forehead—still feverish—and assures her that everything will be fine. She will give them a son, he knows, and they will call him Dovid. A royal name for a future king, a special boy who will raise us all out of misery.

  He blows on the embers again, retrieves his shtreimel, and steps out into a bone-colored dawn. There are fewer screams now, only whimpering, and the murmurs of Kaddish for the dead. He does not pause, though, to offer condolences. He can’t. Mendel Gryn doesn’t belong to this shtetl, this wretchedness, this death. He belongs in a radiant sky, with Malki.

  * * * * *

  In backward figure-eights, Malki orbits the village. Animals, musicians, menorahs all hover in her wake. The moon is out now, a milky orb, but its rays—no less than the sun’s—illuminate her.

  I no longer call out to her, no longer flap my arms. It’s enough just to behold her, I realize. Dayenu. Enough merely to revere her from earth. So I watch and marvel, yet my yearning refuses to ebb. Though penniless and hungry, ragged and unkempt, I still have the strength to long. A need more basic than food, than shelter. Love. I crave it and cannot live without hers.

  It’s hopeless, I know. Hopelessly splendorous. But then, suddenly, Malki drifts off-course. Sailing away from the village, not toward the town but the other direction—toward the forest. There, between the birches, the simplest man might aspire to godliness. Even the most heart-shattered lover might yet become beloved.

  Out of the wheat field, through the broad lanes and light-filled plazas of the village I scamper, with one eye still on the clouds. The forest is only a short distance away. Within, I will chase her, woo and seduce her. Straining above the birdsong, my voice will peal with passion.

  * * * * *

  How many days did he remain locked in the shul, how many nights? Not locked in the literal sense—not with chains or bolts—but kept inside by an irresistible force. Not God, or at least not the God of the musty tractate of Evel Rabbati opened on his table. It instructs him on the proper means for burying and mourning a man who commits suicide, for mourning one killed by non-Jews. Mendel pretends to study it, especially before prayer hours when many others enter the shul. But other times, alone, his candle is reserved for holier texts—those inscribed by his heart.

  He does not eat and not only because he lacks food. Matters of this world mean less to him now. Even Rayna lying feverish in their bed, even their unborn child, Dovid, have waned in significance. It is only his hankering, anguished need to write. In those sacred moments, quill in hand, he is no longer of this place. He is no longer Mendel Gryn but a spirit unleashed in the woods.

  From tree to tree she scuttles, their black-and-white bark like ermine fur caping her shoulders, her head crowned with butterflies. Nevertheless, I follow her. No longer a pauper but a strapping man of boundless vitality. I close in on her, fingertips brushing her hem…

  * * * * *

  Perhaps because he is writing or because of the wind howling through the rotted boards, Mendel does not hear the shouts. Cries of “gey aroyse” and “hahuza” penetrate the shul but not his mind, which is deep in a mystical forest. He does not hear the whips and reins, the pleas for mercy, and the crushing of hooves. Instead, he writes, “One leap, two at most, and I will have her.”

  Only when shots and screams resound outside the shul does Mendel at last stagger out, but too late. He senses a shadow but otherwise cann
ot make out the mounted Cossack looming over him. Discerns the sparks flying from torched houses and hears the hiss of the blade. The first blow, cleaving his shtreimel, sends him reeling, and the second lays him down in the mud. There he remains, in the blood and the cow muck, breathing once, twice…

  And then, I embrace her. She laughs and laughingly succumbs. In the forest, united, we dance, we fly. Treetops tickle us deliriously. Malki, I burble. Malki, I sob. Malki, for eternity, is mine.

  * * * * *

  Lately, when not greeting activists or debating his critics on TV, Dudu dwelt on his quirks. Did anybody notice them, he worried, and when did they start? It took time, but he finally recalled that the gray Oxford shoes, triple knotted, were favored by his sixth-grade teacher. His need to always keep his refrigerator full stemmed from a stepfather who survived the 1948 siege of Jerusalem—so he claimed—chewing leather. But the source of his sneezing routine eluded him. Not until one day, in the middle of defending a controversial pension bill, did the memory revisit him of his mother looking down as he wiped his nose and declaring, “That’s not good.”

  The realization that yet another of his characteristics originated with his mother only added to Dudu’s distress. It seemed that that there was no facet of his life, public or private, in which she failed to have a hand, if not other appendages as well. Because of her, a firebrand opponent of virtually all the State’s founders, he had entered politics, and because of her he walked with his shoulder-blades crimped against the knives that might at any time cleave them. And because of her, Dudu believed, he never fully experienced love. Even today, when he wheeled her from the home to his office, she’d pause at the photos of the long-dead legislators on his wall, raise a crooked finger and cackle, “That one and that one. And oooh, that one.”