Emil and Karl

by Yankev Glatshteyn

  A woman with unkempt hair came running in a panic. She stood close to the boys and peered at Karl, with her small, nearsighted eyes.

  “Can this be Karl?” she exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Karl answered, feeling happy inside, because he was with people he knew.

  “Did you sleep here all night?” the janitor asked. “Was this your bed?”

  “Yes,” Karl answered.

  “Terrible! Terrible!” the janitor shouted. He ran around in the cellar, and kept shouting, “Terrible! Terrible!”

  “Hush, Josef,” said his wife, trying to calm him.

  “No, don’t ‘hush’ me, I feel like shouting. Let them come and punish me, I’m not afraid. Terrible! Terrible!”

  “Josef, please, be quiet,” Berta pleaded.

  Karl felt very grateful that the janitor was so concerned. The boy quickly explained what had happened to his friend Emil and to his father and mother.

  “And how is your mother, have you heard anything from her?”

  “No,” Karl answered, lowering his head.

  “Terrible! Terrible! Berta, what has happened to the world?”

  The two boys sat on the floor, not moving from their places.

  “Take them into the house. We have to give them something to eat.”

  When he saw that his wife hadn’t moved, the janitor threw down the brooms and lifted up both boys.

  “I’m not afraid of anyone. Let them come. I want to know if it’s against the law to give food to such poor, unfortunate children. I’d like to hear it with my own ears.”

  And when Berta still stood there, the janitor shouted so loud at her that she trembled. “Are you no longer afraid of God?”

  “Josef!” she cried in a pleading voice.

  He took hold of Emil with one hand and Karl with the other and led them up several steps. There he opened a door and led the boys down a few more steps. It was dark, but then the janitor opened another door and it became lighter. He brought the boys into a cramped basement room.

  This room was a little brighter than the cellar. Emil saw his reflection in a rusty mirror, and it frightened him. He was so filthy that he didn’t recognize himself.

  Just then the janitor’s wife came over to him with a cold, wet cloth. She gave his face a good washing and then washed his hands, wiping each finger clean. Then she did the same with Karl. The boys felt somewhat refreshed by the cold cloth, which the janitor’s wife rinsed out several times in a basin.

  She set out bread, butter, and cheese and poured them each half a glass of milk. The boys didn’t say a word; they ate in silence. The basement room was quiet. Emil looked carefully at the janitor’s wife, noticing the reddish color of her hair. He also saw that the janitor didn’t have any hair at all, but he had a heavy mustache that drooped over each side of his mouth.

  Josef sat in the farthest corner of the room and rocked slowly in his chair. When the boys finished eating, he spoke to them.

  “Every night you should come and sleep in the cellar, do you hear me, Karl? And you, what is your name?”

  Karl answered for him. “His name is Emil.”

  “Karl, Emil—every night. I’ll put something down on the floor for you to sleep on. No one will dare disturb you. No one!” he shouted, as he rose from his rocking chair.

  “Josef! Josef! You’ll make things bad for us all.”

  “I’m not afraid, let them come. Are they going to shoot at me? Let them. I’ll just ask them, one man to another. I’ll point to these two boys. See, this is Emil and this is Karl! Is there anything wrong with that? I’ll ask them.” He banged on the table. “Berta, I’m not afraid.”

  After this he calmed down, and he walked out of the house with slow, tired steps. He returned with the two brooms over his shoulder, like two rifles. He picked up a few rags, then took a can and shook it to see if there was still anything inside.

  “There’s still enough kerosene,” his wife told him. Josef left the house without looking behind.

  Berta went over to Karl and gave him a kiss. She kissed Emil, then took a basket and went over to the door.

  “I’m going shopping for supper,” she told them as she stood by the door. “Why don’t you finish your milk, Karl?”

  After she left, Karl told Emil that Josef and Berta were very good people. Everyone in the building liked them. Not long ago their only child, who was five years old, had died.

  “My mother always used to say that the janitor has a heart of gold. He never yells at us kids. He plays with us whenever he has time.”

  “All the other kids must be in school by now,” Emil said suddenly in a wistful voice.

  Karl stood on a chair and stuck his head out the small window. “It’s nice outside,” he said to Emil. “What do you say, should we go out? The sun is shining, and it’s not raining any more.”

  “But what about Josef and Berta?” asked Emil. “What will they say when they can’t find us?”

  “Oh, we’ll come right back.” He jumped down off the chair. “We’ll go out for a while, just to say ‘good morning’ to the sun. Come on, Emil, we’ll just walk up and down the street a few times, and then we’ll come right back.”

  Emil didn’t really want to go outside, but he followed his friend.

  chapter seven

  Emil was terrified to be outside. It was beautiful and sunny, but he kept tripping over his own feet. In fact, it was the bright light that made Emil so afraid. Karl was running, almost skipping down the street, and Emil trudged after his friend with reluctant footsteps.

  Emil realized that he actually felt safer in Josef’s cellar. Now the sunlight forced him to open his eyes, but he was afraid to look around.

  Karl knew that Emil wasn’t very happy to be out on the street. As Emil straggled along after him, Karl consoled his friend. “Look, we’ll just look around for a little bit, and then we’ll go back to Josef’s. Josef and his wife are very good people,” Karl added, to show Emil that even though he was excited to be outside he hadn’t forgotten all about his friend.

  Little streams of water from the previous day’s rain, now warmed by the sun, ran down the pavement. Karl charged boldly down the center of the street.

  “We’re going too far,” Emil pleaded.

  “Don’t worry, I can’t get lost here. We’ll turn here on this street, turn left on the next street, and then I’ll show you a trick. We go into that big building, then through the courtyard, and we come back out on this street,” said Karl, showing off his expertise.

  Emil let himself be persuaded, and he began to run after Karl. He even began to feel like playing tag with his friend, when all of a sudden he caught sight of a grocery store. Though the shop was locked up behind a metal grate, all its windows had been shattered. Shards of glass were scattered in front of the store. Usually a shop window like this would be filled with all sorts of jars and cans, different kinds of bread and sausages, but now it was littered with slivers of glass, and all the display stands had been stripped bare.

  Emil stood there, trembling. Karl sensed that something had happened to his friend. He, too, came to a halt, looked at the shop, and all at once his happy mood vanished. He stood frozen in place.

  “Look,” said Karl, pointing at another store. According to its sign, it was a shoe store. It had been left wide open. The windows on both sides had been knocked out completely. The display window was empty, and inside dozens of open boxes lay scattered about. Between the grocery and a clothing store was yet another store, a butcher shop, which stood undisturbed, open for business. The butcher, wearing a bloodstained apron, stood calmly in the doorway. There was no one in his shop, so he walked slowly over to the shoe store and looked in, folding his arms and tucking in his hands, as if to warm them up. He bent over and took a long look inside. Then he walked over to the grocery and examined its empty window. He picked up a couple of pieces of glass and tossed them into the street. Then the butcher sat down on a bench in front of his store, took out a cigaret
te, and lit it. All at once he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he almost choked on the smoke.

  “Let’s go back,” Emil pleaded.

  “Sure, we’re going back,” Karl replied, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the two shops with their shattered, empty windows.

  As they started to walk away, a man appeared from a side street. He was dressed in the same kind of uniform as the men Emil and Karl had seen the night before, which had sent them racing into the cellar.

  But now it was too late to run away. They both froze in their places. Neither one made the slightest attempt to escape.

  “And what are you boys doing out in the street at this time of day?” the stranger asked, grabbing Emil’s shoulder. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  Both boys stood there, their heads bowed.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” The man in the uniform shouted so loudly that it startled the butcher, and he jumped up from his seat.

  “Because, because—” Emil stammered, “Because I’m a Jew.”

  Emil began to cry, and the man, who was holding onto him as though he were a criminal, wasn’t entirely sure that he’d heard correctly.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  “Because I’m a Jew,” Emil answered through his tears.

  “Is that so!” the man stretched his body to its full height. “A little Jewboy, just as I suspected!”

  The butcher, still in his bloody apron, came closer.

  The man in the uniform waited patiently as the butcher approached. And when the butcher looked at him and began to smile, the man in the uniform raised his foot and kicked the butcher so hard that he fell over. The butcher got right up and ran back to his bench, and he sat down.

  From the bench the butcher began to shout, “You have no right to beat up your fellow man, no right. No, none whatsoever!”

  The man in the uniform turned to Karl. “And you, what are you, a Jewboy, too?”

  “A friend of his,” Karl answered quietly.

  A slap rang out, and Karl fell down. When he got up, a warm stream of blood gushed from his nose. He tried to stop it with his hands, and they became completely covered with blood.

  Emil cried even louder when he saw the blood running from Karl’s nose.

  “Come on, Jewboy, and you, too, Jewboy’s friend,” the man said, and he began to herd them along.

  “Stop crying,” Karl said quietly to Emil.

  Even though the boys didn’t resist, the man in the uniform dragged them along roughly, as if they were about to break away and run off.

  He took them into an alley, where there wasn’t another living soul to be seen. Suddenly a short, stout woman came out of a house. She stood there, using her body to block the path of the man, who was still dragging Emil and Karl.

  The woman clasped her hands together. “Now you let go of those two boys, Rudolf, do you hear me, my great big hero? Otherwise, dear husband of mine, I’ll split your head open.”

  “Leave me alone, duty is duty.”

  “I’ll give you ‘duty,’ my fine hero. How much beer have you poured down your throat? What d’you want with these two?”

  He tried to continue on his way, but she stood there like a wall and wouldn’t let him pass.

  “These are Jewboys!”

  “Kids are kids, my big hero,” and she spat right in his face.

  “I’ll have to arrest you,” he yelled, “I’ll tell the authorities. I do my duty, and a wife’s not supposed to interfere.” He gripped Emil and Karl so tightly that he almost pulled off their skin.

  The woman cleared the path for him and let him pass by. “Go on, go on, my fine hero, do your duty, but I’m warning you! Don’t you dare come home. I’ll split your head open.”

  She started to walk away but then came running back. “Rudolf, wait! What’ll you do with those two?”

  He grabbed Emil and Karl with his left hand, clicked his boots together and saluted with his right hand. “It’s my duty. Heil!”

  The woman turned and hurried away, as if she wanted to escape. But as she ran, she shouted down the length of the entire street. “You drunkard, let go of them! Listen to me, let them go!”

  chapter eight

  As soon as they left the narrow alley, the bright sun blinded them. It seemed to Emil as though someone had taken a huge mirror and turned it so that the sun was shining right into their eyes. He stood there, dazed. The man who had been holding onto the boys gripped them even firmer. He also stopped in his tracks, surprised by the bright sun.

  Before Karl got used to the light, it looked as if there was a river in front of them, with hundreds of people swimming in it. At first the boys were spellbound by what they saw. Karl was so curious that he tried to run over and see what was happening, but the man held him back. Emil was curious, too, but he was too frightened to move closer. If the man had let go of them, Emil would have simply run away without even turning around.

  They had never seen anything like it in their lives—not on a Sunday or even a holiday. They were standing near a large public square. Hundreds of people were there, some of them down on the ground, others running back and forth. There was a great commotion, with lots of shouting. As Karl watched, his eyes grew wider and wider.

  The closer they came to the people on the ground, the stranger the scene before them seemed. Now that they could see clearly what was happening, they were completely bewildered.

  The people on the ground were scrubbing the pavement. That much was clear, but why were they washing the streets? And, what was even more puzzling, why were they doing it without brushes or rags, but with their bare hands?

  But Emil and Karl didn’t have much time to wonder. The man in the uniform turned them over to someone else. He raised his hand and said, “Jewboys!”

  “Very good!” said the other man in a calm, cold voice. And then, without warning, he shouted so loud that Emil and Karl froze. “Don’t just stand there! Get down on the ground right now and start washing—and make it fast!”

  Emil and Karl dropped to the ground as if they had been shot. Immediately they began to rub the pavement back and forth. The two boys found themselves in a group of several dozen people, in the middle of which was a basin of water. There were four or five uniformed men who stood there, watching them.

  “Dip your hands in the bowl! Don’t scrub with dry hands!” Emil and Karl dipped their hands into the water and rubbed the stones.

  After dipping his hands into the water about a dozen times, Karl’s hands began to burn. The skin and even the bones of his hands were inflamed. When he dipped his hands into the bowl it felt as though he was putting them into fire.

  Karl examined his hands. They even looked as if they had been set on fire. He stopped scrubbing the stones. He felt that if he rubbed them even one more time, he would scream from the pain, and he didn’t want to scream out loud.

  Emil wasn’t far away, hunched over. Karl watched his friend scrubbing the pavement rapidly with his hands and crying softly to himself.

  “Emil, Emil!” Karl called to him, but Emil didn’t hear. How could he do it, Karl thought. How could he work with his hands like that, dipping them into that basin of burning water?

  Perhaps because he’s crying, Karl said to himself. It’s better to cry.

  Karl’s hands hurt so much that he wished he could get rid of them. If someone were to chop them off, he would feel much better. Even though they were filthy, he could see through the dirt how swollen and red his hands had become. In some places the skin was torn and dark blood was running out of the wounds.

  One of the overseers kicked him.

  “Get to work! No loafing! Dirty Jew!”

  All at once, without knowing why, something flashed through his head—

  “Maybe it’s because Emil is a Jew?”

  Karl didn’t understand clearly, but he continued to repeat over and over—

  “Maybe because he’s a Jew?”

  He plunged his hands qui
ckly into the basin and rubbed the pavement.

  “Because he’s a Jew! Because he’s a Jew!”

  It became a little easier for him to wash the stones—not much, but a little bit easier. Back and forth he scrubbed to the words “Jew,” “Jew,” as if he were moving to the ticking of a clock.

  Someone blew a blast on a whistle, then another. Everyone stopped working. They raised their heads. A huge man stood over them. Emil and Karl used this opportunity to move closer together. The man spoke, smiling. He spoke gently, pronouncing each word distinctly, as if each one came out of his mouth with a little smile. Neither Emil nor Karl understood very much of what he said, but they were glad to have a chance to rest their hands.

  The man continued to speak and to smile. He spoke about the children of Israel, who were being given the opportunity to return to the beginnings of their history. They were replaying it from the very start:

  “But there, in ancient Egypt, they made bricks without straw. Now they wash stones without brushes, but with their bare hands. It’s almost the same thing.”

  And the man added, with a little smile, “With their clean, intelligent hands, with their delicate little hands that hate to work.

  “But the children of Israel will never escape from this Egypt.

  “Oh, no!” said the man, softly but clearly, and again with his little smile, which now made Karl burn, just like the water in the basin.

  “In this Egypt the children of Israel will die, die, die!”

  There was another whistle blast. Once more everyone crawled, like snakes, and scrubbed the pavement. The men in uniform refilled the empty basins from large bottles. The overseers ran back and forth, stepping on hands and on heads. Some people, who bore the brunt of the overseers’ boots more than the others, lay on the ground, motionless.

  People were moaning and screaming. Karl screamed with them. It felt good to scream along with everyone else. It seemed to make things easier.

  Near Karl was a man dressed in a frock coat and top hat. He scrubbed the stones very rapidly. Three or four overseers stood around him, and each time that the top hat fell off his head they forced him to put it on again right away. When the hat was back on top of his head they laughed wildly.