He looked all around. The call that woke him had to have been an owl, a mere owl. But it was a different call from the owl’s the night before. It was much louder. And very close.
Oohoo!
Roberto searched the trees with his eyes. He couldn’t spy the bird or any other animal. He knew the woods had to be teeming with life, but everything knew how to blend in or take cover. Something dangerous could be lurking behind any tree. He looked again. Nothing.
Dawn crept through the woods. If he climbed down now and got an early start, he could make up for the fact that he’d be slowed down by the snow. The owl had done him a favor. He untied the knot in the rope and stuffed it between himself and the trunk as he stretched his arms and shoulders and neck. Then he tied Samuele’s blanket around his neck and wrapped the rope around his waist three times. He tossed his own blanket free of the branches and climbed down after it. He’d tie it around his abdomen later, but first things first. He broke a low branch off the tree to use for digging a latrine.
The snow was only a hand’s depth, soft and powdery. Roberto jammed the branch down hard on the frozen earth. To his amazement, the ground yielded easily. It was all dead leaves and twigs. He dug deeper. And now he could see—this was the opening of an underground animal’s burrow.
What kind of animal burrowed underground? Anything dangerous? Venice had very few open places with dirt, and what dirt there was held no burrows. But Roberto knew about rabbit warrens. Did rabbits store food underground? Maybe if he kept digging, he would find nuts or roots or something else edible. He dug more vigorously.
A brown head popped up out of the snow a meter away. Then the whole furry little creature appeared and ran across the whiteness. There was a back door to the burrow. Another creature followed. Hamsters.
Hoo!
The raucous scream terrified him. Roberto jumped around and saw huge flapping wings, a great hooked beak, two round yellow eyes with tufts over them like devil’s horns. He stumbled backward in surprise and fell. The owl grabbed a hamster in its talons and flew off. It was enormous. The wingspan was more than a grown man’s height. It was brown and black, but its wings were flecked with white. And it disappeared in the treetops. Here and gone, in an instant.
Roberto hadn’t known owls could come that large. He stood and brushed the snow off Samuele’s blanket and muttered little words of gratitude that owls didn’t eat people.
Then he laughed. An owl. An owl and funny, fat little hamsters, like in a pet store. He laughed out loud.
The yowl behind him made the hairs on his neck stand on end. He turned and faced the stare of the wolf. It stood but three meters away, its head held to one side at a steep angle. Its eyes glistened; the centers were deep black holes.
Roberto froze. He would never make it to a tree before the wolf got him. There was nothing to do but fight. The stick he’d been using for digging the latrine lay near his feet. He stooped and grabbed it quickly.
The wolf took a few steps forward. It staggered and stopped close to his blanket, which lay at the foot of the tree Roberto had slept in.
Roberto breathed hard through his mouth. He held the stick with both hands, ready to swing. In that moment he thought about what a pathetic gesture it was—to hold the stick like that—as though it mattered. Wolves ran in packs. Behind this one, others were coming. He couldn’t see them; still, he knew they must be there.
But what else could he do? He gripped the stick with all his strength. And he remembered something Samuele had said. Wolves are loath to attack a full-sized, standing man. He would be fourteen in the spring—and he was average size for his age. He stood tall now. Look at me, wolf, he shouted inside his head—see how tall I am.
The wolf made an odd sound in its throat, almost as though it had a bone stuck there. Then its lower jaw dropped open. Its head leaned more and more to the side.
Slowly Roberto realized there was something wrong with the animal. Very wrong. It was sick. He took his eyes off the wolf just for a moment, to look beyond it through the trees. Nothing stirred. No eyes glowed. It might be a lone wolf, after all.
The wolf tucked its head back to the left and bit at its rear paw. It wobbled. Twisted like that, all its ribs showed. It was emaciated.
This wolf was practically dead. Roberto could probably outrun it. But he needed his blanket first. He would never survive the cold without that blanket. It was essential.
Just a few steps—that’s all it would take—and then he could bend down and reach out slowly and grab the edge of the blanket and run for dear life. The wolf might not even see him reaching, it was so busy chewing at its foot.
Roberto slowly took a step forward. Then another.
The wolf straightened its head and looked at him docilely. It seemed no more threatening than a house dog.
Roberto stepped forward again.
The wolf lunged in an instant transformation—fangs bared, eyes insane.
Roberto had only a second to raise the stick in defense.
The wolf snapped its jaws on the wood with a cracking sound. It wrenched the stick from Roberto and turned in a circle, then stopped, swayed, and fell on the blanket. Its eyes closed; white foam bubbled from its mouth.
Roberto turned and ran. He ran along the stream edge, stumbling over rocks, through scrubby bushes. He ran as fast as he could.
COLD
Roberto drank from the snow-fed water in the stream and shivered. He had left the wolf behind more than an hour ago, but the image of its maddened face lingered and kept him from thinking straight. He had to shake it off. He couldn’t afford not to think straight.
He wore Samuele’s blanket—now his only blanket—draped across his back and around his arms. He used the rope as a belt. It had been terrible luck that the wolf had fallen right on his blanket. No. No, it wasn’t a matter of luck. It was Roberto’s stupidity. He should have tied the blanket around his abdomen when he first climbed down the tree. He should have taken good care of it all the time—if he had, he’d still have two blankets.
Roberto straightened the blanket and took stock of his situation. The stream promised a steady, if poor, food supply. The problem was that it headed southeast. Warmth was due south—and with only one blanket, he needed to get to a warm place fast. Winter was upon him; last night’s snow was the start of the inevitable. It would get worse. Much worse. Everyone knew about Eastern European winters. He left the stream and walked south.
Roberto hoped the sun would warm up the land at least a little as the day went on. But it didn’t. The wind was bitter behind him, and the snow stayed.
The land was much more sloping now, and stands of trees were rare. Roberto climbed from one hill to the next, always on the lookout for anything that moved. He saw a lone white rabbit, but he had no way to kill it. He thought of the hamster burrow back in the woods. It was a pity he hadn’t gotten the chance to raid it for nuts. His lips were cracked and his teeth felt fuzzy and he was hungry, always hungry. He saw the tracks of deer. He ate snow in little bits to quench his thirst. He walked and as he walked, he talked to himself. After a while, his stomach actually hurt less somehow.
Then he saw them. They came over the crest of a hill. Tanks. Jeeps. Troops of soldiers. Mules. From this distance he couldn’t tell whether they were Soviets or Germans. He stared for a moment, unbelieving. This was only his third day of being alone, but he’d come to think of the world as empty of humans. Of course it wasn’t. The war was going on. People were killing each other.
Those soldiers might kill him.
He looked around for a place to hide. But he was already well past the last stand of trees, and if he tried to run back to them, he was almost sure to be seen. There was no vegetation whatsoever between him and the soldiers. Nothing to hide behind. Nothing to hide under. Except snow.
Snow.
He took the blanket off his shoulders and spread it on the ground. He covered it with snow. Then he snaked himself under it and peeked out the other side. He cr
awled along like that, on his belly, in the snow, covered by the camouflaged blanket. Snow caught at the collar of his shirt, then got shoved down inside, freezing him from his Adam’s apple all the way down his sternum. He wrapped his hands and forearms in the corners of the covering blanket, but the snow scraped and burned at his upper arms. It hurt like fire. When he was close enough to see the soldiers well, he stopped.
They were a mixed group. The ones at the front, with the tanks, wore the German uniforms. The ones at the rear, with the mules, wore the Italian uniforms. The German soldiers had heavier boots, better coats. They walked in neat rows, with energy and assurance. The Italian soldiers were scraggly in comparison. They walked in scattered groups. Their shoulders slumped. They looked disheartened, even from where Roberto lay.
One soldier nudged another in the shoulder. They were talking. Maybe telling stories. Like Roberto and Samuele used to do. Roberto couldn’t hear anything from this distance. He wished he could listen to their voices. He’d give a lot to hear Italian. He’d give a lot to hear a story and tell a story and not be alone, so alone.
But they all carried weapons, Germans and Italians alike. So it didn’t matter if they held their heads high or not. And it didn’t matter what language they spoke. They were all there for the same reason.
If Roberto showed himself, they’d surely feed him. And maybe they’d give him better clothes. But he’d be punished for running away from the work camp. And he’d definitely have to work for them somehow—he’d have to be part of this war again.
Roberto pressed both fists against his stomach to loosen the hunger knot, just as he had done so often when he was back at the farm work camp. He filled his mouth with snow to keep himself from shouting. He watched the soldiers go by. Keeping silent was hard—harder than facing the wolf.
He waited till they were out of sight. Then he stood up and shook the snow off the blanket. He was shivering uncontrollably by now. Lying on the snow had taken its toll. And filling his mouth like that had been foolish. He needed to warm up. And fast. He rubbed the blanket hard on his arms and neck. He stamped his feet and walked in a circle and rubbed and rubbed. Then he wrapped himself as tightly as he could in the blanket.
He followed the trail of the soldiers, going where they’d come from. Somewhere along that trail there had to be station points for supplies. Somewhere there had to be food. Somewhere there had to be warmth.
He walked all afternoon.
He came to nothing. But the trail went generally south, so at least he was heading toward a warmer climate.
Night came. There were no trees to burrow under or climb up into. The moon was bright on the snow, so bright Roberto could still follow the soldiers’ trail. He kept walking. Whether sleeping or moving, he was a target for whatever might be on the prowl—animal or human. Soldiers.
But he wasn’t so sure anymore that he didn’t want to be found by soldiers. It was cold. And it was growing colder as the night deepened. Freezing to death seemed more likely and more awful with every step.
Sometime in the middle of the night he saw the thing looming in the distance. At first it looked like a prehistoric monster from a nightmare. Part jutted up into the sky—a broken claw, scrabbling futilely at the stars. Pieces stabbed out in all directions. Roberto stood still and looked at it until he was sure it wasn’t alive. Nevertheless, his jaw clenched and his ears buzzed with fear. He walked closer, and the smell of dead fire invaded his nose. A sick feeling grew in his stomach. There was something dreadfully wrong here.
He stood in front of what must have been a giant shed. It had been burned to the ground. And recently. No snow had fallen over the destruction yet. The thing in front of him was a mess of twisted metal. Some kind of contraption for farming—a reaper, maybe. And behind it was a burned-out tractor with a crank in front. The huge iron rear wheels had wide, flat spikes. It had been built to be indestructible in the field. But no one had thought of fire. Other unrecognizable things lay in the rubble.
The fire must have been tremendous—gigantic flames licking their way up toward the clouds. It must have been so hot. Oh, heavenly hot. If only he could have been nearby when it happened. If only he could have warmed himself in its glow.
Roberto looked around at the surrounding land. It was level here. And something about it made him know this had been fertile soil—a wonderful farm. He imagined it in warm days, thick with yellow wheat. He thought of the people baking heavy loaves of bread from that grain, sitting around tables, swapping stories as they ate.
He looked back at the charred remains. The people who had worked this reaper, this tractor—they would have no way to prepare the earth this spring, no way to harvest it. They’d go hungry.
Roberto was hungry. And he was enormously sad. It was better that he hadn’t been here to feel the fire. It hadn’t been a heavenly heat—it had been hellish. It had been full of death.
He turned back to the soldiers’ tracks, moving listlessly now. He wasn’t sure he could stand to see what else lay along this trail.
If anything else lay along this trail.
Maybe he’d trudge forever. Endlessly.
He moved more and more slowly. The small clouds of his breath were spaced farther apart. Everything about him was slowing down. He stared with dry, stinging eyes into the nothingness. He tripped and fell. The snow rasped against his cheek, almost like wet sand. He got up with difficulty and looked around. Nothing. So much nothing. He would freeze here on this godforsaken trail in Ukraine. Roberto’s tears left streaks that froze tight on his cheeks. He ran then, stumbling and crazy. He ran.
He was practically within calling distance of the small settlement before he realized it was houses and not just a clustering of bushes. He was so tired by now, he was becoming stupider by the minute. There was even a sign, undoubtedly and proudly saying the name of this village, though it was written in the Cyrillic alphabet and Roberto couldn’t read a single letter of it. Blessed sign. Blessed village. A cat ran across the front of a house and disappeared around the corner.
Roberto walked along what was clearly the road through the village. He couldn’t wait to see a human face, and at the same time he was terrified. Freezing was not the only way to die.
His boots crunched on the snow. It sounded shockingly loud to his ears. He expected someone to bolt from a house and shoot him dead before he could surrender. He lifted his hands to the moon. They shook with the cold. He coughed and his chest rattled, resounding in his head as though it were a hollow wooden ball holding a few dried beans. He turned in a circle, to give a full view. Anyone who took a moment to look him over, anyone who didn’t just shoot at first sight, would know he was harmless. They had to know.
The houses were small, single-storied, and square. They had steepish roofs, rounded on the top. He counted eleven of them. There was no light anywhere, no spiral of smoke from a chimney, no sign of movement beyond that single cat.
The houses hadn’t been burned. But something had happened here. Something bad.
He couldn’t just stand there all night. In fact, the wind was picking up in a fierce way. He probably couldn’t stay standing more than a few more minutes. Even if there were no live hearths, these houses provided shelter from the sharp wind, and he needed to get to the other side of those doors now or never. He kept his hands high over his head, though they felt heavy as lead. He went up to the closest house. The front door stood partly open.
Somewhere in his head was the knowledge that he should have been alarmed at that fact. But he couldn’t face that alarm right now. He needed shelter from the wind. He shivered violently. He put his face into the opening and called out, “Hello.” But his voice came as a tiny croak.
No one answered. Nothing stirred.
He opened the door and stared into the blackness. “Hello. Is anyone here?” The room was cold and still. He couldn’t make out anything at all in this dark—not the outline of furniture, nothing. It could have been totally empty, for all he knew. Ther
e was no warmth here. But at least there was no wind. He pulled the door shut behind him, dropped to the floor, and slept.
LIFE
When Roberto opened his eyes, the boy sitting in the chair beside him jumped to his feet and held an ax high over his head. “Lezhy!” he shouted.
Roberto immediately lifted both hands.
The boy stamped his feet and jabbered something long and incomprehensible.
Roberto stared at the ax. The head was heavy enough to split his chest in one blow. He didn’t move.
The boy spoke again. His eyes flicked around the room as he talked, then settled back on Roberto.
Roberto dared to look past him. The hearth was cold. A large black pot hung there, like in Roberto’s kitchen at home. In Venice when frost came, his family slept in the kitchen in front of the fireplace, all of them together. It was toasty. This room should have been toasty now. Instead, Roberto could see his breath, almost as though he were still outside.
A table stood near the hearth with two chairs. There was a wide bed against one wall with a chest of drawers beside it. And on the floor in front of the chest was the body of an old man. He’d been shot in the neck.
Roberto’s face went slack. He knew it. He knew it last night when he’d found the front door partly open. He’d known it even earlier, when he’d seen no smoke from the chimneys. He knew what had happened to this village.
Roberto looked back at the boy. “Was he your grandfather?”
The boy shook the ax and shouted fiercely, “Stiy! Ne rukhaisia!”
Roberto lifted his hands higher. The boy gripped the ax so tightly that the skin across his knuckles shone. His voice was strong and rough. But Roberto looked into his eyes now, and the boy’s eyes gave him away. Roberto recognized that look—sheer desperation.
Stones in Water Page 9