Stones in Water

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Roberto ran his hands along his own calves now. They had no bruises. He rolled his shoulders backward a few times. No aches or pains. Nothing hurt him today but hunger and homesickness. And this was probably true of all the boys except the one who had run away, for the soldiers had been particularly lenient lately. No one had been beaten all week. In fact, the soldiers had been letting them do whatever they wanted when it was break time from work. They were clearly buoyed up by the German successes.

  One of them had tried to explain to the boys. He’d drawn a map in the dirt and pointed and gestured and repeated, over and over, until they got the gist of it. German forces had invaded Egypt—and they were obviously doing well, much better than Italy had done there almost two years ago now. Next they’d moved ahead in their invasion of Russia. They had taken a town called Sevastopol on the Black Sea. The Soviets had piled up bags of sand to hide behind when the bullets flew. But the sand saved no one. The soldier laughed. The war would be over soon; victory was within reach. He gave the news as though the boys should rejoice in their common victory.

  And the boys did rejoice. Roberto, too. He couldn’t wait. But not because he cared about winning. Instead, it was because victory meant he’d see his mother and father. And Sergio and Memo. Victory meant he’d go home.

  Roberto leaned toward Enzo. “What do you think our job will be now that the tarmac’s built?”

  Enzo finished his egg. He looked off. It was clear he wasn’t going to answer. He talked less and less these days. Partly that was to keep the soldiers from noticing their friendship and maybe splitting them up. But even when no one was watching, Enzo hardly talked. Except at night. If something awful had happened during the day, Roberto would have trouble falling asleep. So Enzo would tell him stories to put him to sleep. Just like Roberto’s father used to tell him stories.

  Enzo stretched his arms out in front now and yawned. His upper arms were thick with muscles.

  Roberto rubbed his own thickening arms. “I hope it’s outside work again. I like feeling strong.”

  “We’re not good for anything else.” Enzo slid his butt out from the wall till he was lying flat. He closed his eyes.

  “This is the longest break we’ve had.”

  Enzo yawned again and rolled on his side.

  At night the boys slept in the barn. They stretched out where they could, fighting for the straw. Only Roberto and Enzo didn’t fight. Enzo said he couldn’t afford to have anyone dislike him. And Roberto wasn’t a fighter, anyway. So the two of them slept on earth packed hard by hooves. Roberto sometimes woke in the night because Enzo tossed and turned. Enzo slept badly. He needed this catnap now. Roberto leaned his head back against the wall and looked at the sky. It was nearly cloudless, bright and clean. You wouldn’t know bombs were falling in Germany or Egypt or Russia or anywhere. The sky seemed serene.

  The soldier they called Wasser, because he was the one who usually came around with the water bucket, stood at the foot of the tarmac and blew his whistle. Roberto shook Enzo by the shoulder. They joined the other boys in line.

  Wasser said something about water. He waved his arms. Then he laughed. Wasser liked to laugh. None of the boys joined in. Ever. But that didn’t stop Wasser. He chuckled to himself and marched off across a harvested field, calling for them to follow. They walked through a second field and into a stand of trees.

  “One against eighteen,” whispered Enzo in Roberto’s ear.

  Roberto didn’t answer, and he knew Enzo didn’t expect him to. Even though the Germans treated the boys like prisoners, they were technically a work force under German control. Italy and Germany were together in this war, after all. They were fascists together.

  And if Roberto forgot about that alliance and really let himself think about fighting Wasser and the other soldiers, as though the Germans were the enemy, there still wasn’t any point in answering Enzo. Enzo knew as well as anyone that it was eighteen against a whole country. Everyone remembered the man and woman who had brought back the runaway.

  Enzo wouldn’t do anything rash; he just said things—things he never intended to do. Roberto remembered Enzo talking about the soldiers on the train car—“two of them to a whole carload of us”—and he remembered how Enzo had thought of the picks as weapons when Roberto had never even considered such a thing—and he could think of at least a dozen other times Enzo had whispered words of rebellion, tallying up the odds. That was just Enzo’s way. Fighting words. Roberto liked it when Enzo said those things because at least he was talking; at least Roberto could hear a voice other than his own that he understood without effort.

  They came out of the trees at the edge of a stream. Wasser said something that, for once, wasn’t an order. He spoke in an almost friendly tone. He made a gesture like he was diving.

  The boys unbuttoned their clothes. Within moments some of them were stripped and wading in.

  Roberto looked quickly at Enzo, his cheeks hot with alarm. Enzo stared straight ahead and walked to the edge of the water, almost as though he were marching. He stripped off his shirt.

  Roberto stripped off his own grimy shirt. He’d lived in these clothes ever since they’d left Venice. It was a relief to be free of them. He could tell from their faces that everyone felt the same way. The boys in the water splashed each other and actually laughed. It would have been a wonderful moment—clean and free—if it weren’t for the worry. Roberto moved closer to Enzo.

  Enzo sat and took off his shoes. Then he pulled off his shorts and underwear together, still sitting. His privates were hidden between his legs. Roberto did the same. They ran into the water, Enzo half hunched over, splashing at Roberto. Roberto splashed back. He tried to smile. He tried to pretend they were having fun.

  And now they were up to their waists in water, safe at last. They swam. Closer and closer to the other side. For a second, only a second, the thought of escape flashed through Roberto’s head. Futile thought. There was nowhere to escape to.

  Wasser shouted.

  Roberto and Enzo swam back toward the first side. One of the boys called to them. He said something in an Alpine dialect—and Roberto figured out it was about how well they swam. The boy’s voice was full of surprise. Roberto looked around. Only three other boys were swimming besides him and Enzo. Any Venetian boy knew how to swim. But someone from an inland village, a hamlet in the mountains, where would he learn to swim unless he lived on a lake or a river? Roberto panicked for a second. Could anyone there possibly remember that at the train station in Munich, Enzo had lined up with the boys from Trento? Was there a river near Trento? A lake? Roberto couldn’t think of any from his school geography lessons. Some of these boys had been with Roberto and Enzo since that train ride, but surely they’d been thinking about their own worries. They couldn’t remember who had lined up where. No one could remember that. And even if they did, what would it matter? So a boy from Trento knew how to swim. So what?

  Still, Roberto came back into the shallow water. He drank. The stream was delicious. He turned to tell Enzo how good the water tasted, but Enzo wasn’t behind him. Enzo still swam in the middle. He swam in circles like a goldfish in a bowl. He swam and swam and swam.

  Wasser blew his whistle. The other boys got out of the water and shook off, doglike. Still wet, they put their clothes on.

  Enzo still swam.

  Wasser shouted to him.

  Roberto stood in knee-deep water and watched Enzo. His heart beat so hard his chest moved up and down. All eyes were on Enzo, eyes that they had tried so hard to hide from up till now. If people kept watching, they would see Enzo as he got out of the water—they would know he was Jewish. Roberto should do something. Anything. But he couldn’t move. He felt glued to the spot. Numb with doom.

  Wasser’s face turned red. He blew his whistle hard. The blood vessels in his forehead stood out.

  Roberto turned to him suddenly, his head buzzing. “He can’t hear well,” he said loudly. He hit his ears with the palms of his hands. “He’
s sort of deaf.” Roberto didn’t wait for an answer. He swam out, desperation driving his arms and legs faster and faster. He grabbed Enzo by the elbow, not knowing what to expect, ready to punch him if that’s what it took.

  Enzo turned his head toward Roberto with a dreamy smile. It was as though he didn’t understand anything, as though the wild fear in Roberto was part of another world. He let Roberto pull him back into the shallow water easily.

  Everyone watched. Wasser’s brows tightened, and his face was hard. Roberto knew he had been stupid to say Enzo was deaf. Everyone knew Enzo wasn’t deaf. Roberto had been stupid stupid stupid, and now they would both pay. But Wasser gave a quick, firm nod. He pointed to the shore and said something. Then he walked to the edge of the wood and blew the whistle.

  The boys hurried to line up.

  Roberto came out of the water slowly, with Enzo close behind and off to the side away from the other boys.

  “Didn’t you love it?” whispered Enzo. “For a little while I pretended I was home.”

  “Love it?” Roberto almost choked on the words. “That was crazy.” He spoke out of the side of his mouth. The fear was subsiding, and a new sharp feeling seared his eyes. He blinked hard as he sat and pulled on his clothes.

  “It wasn’t crazy. It was fun.”

  “It was as crazy as when you walked to the end of the train car and Memo and I had to rescue you.” Roberto’s fingers fumbled on his buttons, he was so angry now. He remembered what Memo had said in the train—he told Enzo he wouldn’t follow him the next time he did something stupid. Maybe Roberto shouldn’t follow Enzo next time. “Don’t do those things.”

  “Why not? What could be a better place for it than water?”

  “A better place for what?”

  Enzo looked at Roberto. Then he looked away. “It doesn’t matter. You’re right.”

  What didn’t matter? Roberto stood up. There was something terrible in what Enzo said—something in the tone of it—something too terrible to think about. Roberto’s anger vanished. “Whatever you do, I’ll be there. You won’t be alone. Ever.” His voice caught. “You’ll get us both in trouble.”

  Enzo stood up, too. “You will, won’t you? You’ll be there.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Roberto. I won’t do it again.”

  A boy knocked into Enzo from behind. Roberto hadn’t realized anyone was nearby. This boy was one of the few who had been swimming. He looked at them as he passed. And there was something in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. In an instant, Roberto understood this boy knew Enzo’s secret. Roberto went numb, all over again.

  Enzo didn’t even look at Roberto, though Roberto was sure that Enzo, too, had seen the message in the boy’s face. Instead, Enzo walked quickly to the line. Roberto followed, moving without thought, as though in a nightmare.

  That night the nameless boy came up behind Enzo at dinner. He tapped Enzo on the shoulder. He held out his hand. Enzo gave him his wurst. Roberto sucked in air. That was supposed to be Roberto’s wurst. The boy stuck the wurst in his pocket and held his hand out again. Enzo hesitated. The boy waited. Enzo gave him his potato. The boy went off and sat down to eat.

  Roberto’s head spun. The wurst was gone. Enzo’s potato was gone. Just gone. And it was so long till breakfast. Roberto looked at his own food. He was hungry. Viciously hungry. He split his potato and handed half to Enzo. Enzo took it without a word.

  Roberto offered him half his wurst. Enzo shook his head. Roberto wanted to argue, though his fingers stayed closed possessively around the wurst. How could Enzo stick to his food restrictions when there was so little to eat? Roberto hadn’t thought twice about not eating wurst on Friday, even though he was Catholic and he wasn’t supposed to eat meat on Friday. He didn’t even know what day was what by now, but he knew that he’d eaten wurst on at least three Fridays since he’d come to Germany, maybe four, maybe five—and he didn’t care. Oh, he did, of course he cared—but he didn’t suffer over it. He wouldn’t let himself. God would understand. If anyone should understand, God should. “God would want us to stay strong,” he said to Enzo.

  Enzo took a bite of potato. “God wants me to know who I am. Especially now.” Enzo took another bite. “And I do. If I was starving, I’d have to eat it. That’s the Hebrew admonition of pekuach nefesh—saving a life is the most important thing. But I’m not starving. Not yet.”

  Roberto’s stomach growled. He refused to listen to it. He held out the other half of the potato.

  Enzo looked away and shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  Roberto shoved the potato into Enzo’s hand and went off to eat his Brot and wurst by himself. He chewed extra long. He tried to think about how thick and good this Brot was. Instead, he heard stomping feet on a giant drum, the hollow drum of his stomach. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to feel again the cool, pure water of the stream this afternoon. Instead, the agony of watching Enzo swim jabbed his empty gut.

  He went to sleep early.

  BARBED WIRE

  A plane landed in the middle of the night. Roberto heard the engine and then the confusion outside. He sat up.

  “Go back to sleep,” said Enzo. “If there’s work to do, they’ll wake us soon enough.”

  Roberto rolled on his side. He listened hard to try to catch the tone of the voices. He still knew almost no German words, but he had learned he could tell a lot about how he was going to be treated from the soldiers’ tone of voice. He scratched his arm and listened to them now.

  “Once upon a time there was a hunchback boy.” Enzo’s voice was low and mellow. His face was right beside Roberto’s. “Everyone made fun of him. They tortured him. They kicked him and threw filth on the back of his pants so people would think he couldn’t control his bowels. So he ran away.” Enzo spoke very slowly. Roberto could tell he was sleepy. “He dug a deep hole that slanted sideways, so that when he crawled into it, it formed a roof over his head. He lined it with smooth stones from the beach. It was his cave—his own handmade cave.” Enzo’s voice was so tired. He needed sleep desperately. But Roberto knew Enzo would keep talking until he was sure Roberto was asleep.

  Roberto lay on his back as still as he could. He concentrated on breathing rhythmically and loudly, like a person sleeping. And, as he’d expected, Enzo soon stopped talking and fell into his own deep sleep.

  The first night in this work camp, when Roberto couldn’t sleep because the image of the soldier shooting the boy who had fainted kept replaying in his head, Enzo told him Bible stories from the times before Christ. He said his family told each other these stories to keep their spirits strong when things went bad. The next night he told another story. And the night after that. Roberto looked forward to them. He counted on them. He asked for the best ones over and over.

  Later, Enzo moved on to stories he made up himself. He’d work in details from their day—but he’d twist them so that they came out magical, so that the boys in the stories always wound up safe. This story about the hunchback boy was promising. Roberto wanted to hear the rest of that story. He would have to ask Enzo to repeat it another night.

  Roberto stared through the dark at the underside of the loft above. His stomach contracted into a small, hard ball. He listened to the sleep noises of the other boys. He listened to the rustles of rats in the straw. He listened to the rise and fall of voices outside, sometimes close, sometimes far away. Their tarmac was being used. They were part of the war.

  Roberto had played war as a kid—when he was seven and eight. And he had gone to some of the drills in the campos in Venice, where everyone told stories about people they knew who’d been in wars. But none of the play and none of the talk had ever been like this. It had been heroic. In the war games, Roberto had triumphed over evil. In the stories about battles, Italians had won with their ferocity and honor. But here what Roberto did amounted to working like a slave, under shouts he couldn’t understand, without enough food.

  Roberto made fists of both hands and pressed them against h
is growling stomach. He remembered Sergio punching him in the belly last winter, punching him hard again and again. It was right after Memo’s thirteenth birthday. Memo had decided it was time to learn how to drink something more than just wine. So he’d gotten a small bottle of grappa, and he and Roberto had finished it off together. Roberto had never been so sick in his life—and he’d never been sick without being able to tell Mamma. Sergio had punched him to make him vomit. It worked. But Roberto always suspected that Sergio hadn’t done it just to help.

  Sergio and Memo. They could take care of themselves. They were fine. Maybe they were even back in Venice by now. Both of them knew how to fend for themselves better than Roberto ever had. Roberto pounded his fists on his stomach. Sergio and Memo were fine. He pounded rhythmically. They were fine, fine, fine, fine.

  Roberto let his hands drop to his sides. He said his good-night prayers again and waited for sleep. He waited and waited.

  Dawn came at last, and with it the shrill of Wasser’s whistle. Roberto got up and ran for breakfast. He was close to the front of the line. His hands itched with the need to grab the food.

  This morning was cheese. Roberto put his potato, Brot, and cheese in his pocket. He looked around. There was Enzo, halfway back in the line. The nameless boy was behind him. Roberto stood unmoving. He watched the line move forward. Enzo took his food and stepped out of line. The boy got his food; then he followed Enzo. He tapped him on the shoulder. Enzo handed over his potato and cheese in one move. Beautiful potato. Beautiful, beautiful cheese.

  Roberto stared at Enzo, who was standing alone now. They were hungry enough as it was. And now they had half as much as before, except for the Brot. At least the thief didn’t take Enzo’s Brot. Maybe he was half decent. Or maybe he didn’t like the black German loaves.