The Night of the Burning

by Linda Press Wulf

  That particular Saturday I was waiting for Papa to walk past on his way home from synagogue, so that I could go with him. I’d saved a few dried cherries for Nechama, and I was sucking on the sour pit of the last one I’d eaten. Uncle Pinchas had not gone to pray because he had a cold; he was drinking hot tea.

  Suddenly there was shrieking outside. Mrs. Leib came running down the lane, sobbing and flapping her apron. “The army is taking men from the shul! God help us, the soldiers are dragging men into their cart!” she wailed as she stumbled past.

  We all ran to the door, and as Aunt Friedka opened it, we heard the sound of shouting and crying coming from the synagogue.

  “Papa’s at shul!” I exclaimed. The skin of my right eyelid started to jump up and down, and I pressed two fingers against it. “Who is taking men? What’s happening?”

  Aunt Friedka had a different man on her mind. In an instant, she shoved her husband back inside. “Quick, Pinchas, you have to hide. Maybe they’ll go from door to door after the synagogue. Here! No, here, in the chest with the blankets. Hurry, Pinchas.”

  It seemed only a minute or two until we heard the noise of cartwheels rattling along the alley. Jews wouldn’t be riding on the Sabbath, and none of the villagers would have reason to come this way, so it had to be the soldiers’ cart. I prayed fiercely, digging my nails into my hand. “Make it go past, God. Don’t let it stop.”

  The cart stopped right outside. “Here?” I cried.

  Aunt Friedka glared at me warningly and hissed, “Shh! Drink your tea.”

  The sun was blocked out as big rough men pushed their way in through the low doorway and took up all the space. I shrank into my chair. They were so large, and there were three of them, all clad in greenish gray uniforms, stained and even ragged. The heaviest one seemed to be the leader. He brandished a grimy piece of paper and a stump of pencil.

  “Move aside!” he shouted. “The Czar’s army needs one more strong man from this village and the other Jews got away.”

  “My husband is not at home,” said Aunt Friedka firmly, and she stood up right in front of the soldier. I squeezed my mug of tea so tightly that my fingertips were white.

  With one burly arm, the soldier thrust her into a corner and she fell. A scream slipped out of my mouth. “You Jews are either at home or at your synagogue on Saturdays. Search the house, men.”

  I ran to Aunt Friedka as she got up from the floor, her mouth grim. She grasped my hand and we stood clutching each other while the men stomped around the room in their muddy boots. With loud crashes, they turned the bed and benches upside down. The house was small and it took only a few minutes until they noticed the chest.

  “And what do the Jews keep in here?” one soldier shouted, throwing open the wooden lid with its heavy hinge. Aunt Friedka’s hand tightened around mine.

  Another giant soldier, with cloth puttees wound around the calves of his massive legs, tossed aside the top blankets and let out a guffaw. Then he leaned down and grabbed the body bent double inside. Uncle Pinchas’s cap was knocked askew and his face was white with shock.

  “Number seven,” the leader announced, and he licked his stub of pencil and laboriously scribbled something on his paper. “Move him out. Next village.”

  With a shriek, Aunt Friedka snatched the blankets from the ground and ran after the soldiers. I ran right behind her.

  “Pinchas, take the blankets. Pinchas, you will be cold.”

  Uncle Pinchas twisted and managed to grab the blankets from her as he was shoved into the back of the cart with the other Jews. In a flash, I scanned every face of the six men sitting stunned on the wooden bench, dust from the scuffle streaking their black Shabbes coats. No Papa, no Papa; they didn’t have my papa.

  Uncle Pinchas was the last in line, his face leaning anxiously toward his wife. “Friedka! I will be back! I will write as soon as I get there. Take care of yourself, Friedka!” Then we could no longer hear his voice as the cart rattled away from the village.

  “Help! Mama, Papa, help!” I screamed as Aunt Friedka’s body sagged and she sat down hard on the ground. With all my strength, I supported her shoulders. I was shaking like a leaf, but I managed to hold her until the neighbors ran to us. They shouted for Papa, and then I was in his arms.

  About six months after Uncle Pinchas was conscripted, there was a sudden banging on our own door one afternoon. Nechama and I rushed to Mama’s skirt and she pulled us behind her. Then she stood as if paralyzed. The knocking was repeated even more loudly; finally Mama stepped forward to open the door.

  A stranger in a worn uniform thrust out an envelope. “Official business of the Czar,” he announced importantly. Reluctantly, Mama took the envelope from him. He turned and strode off.

  I drew in a sharp breath. It really was from the Czar: there was a big stamp showing his close-bearded head. Nechama reached out her hand and fingered the thick red sealing wax anchoring a piece of red ribbon. “The Czar sticks a ribbon on his letters,” she said wonderingly.

  “It’s a letter for Papa from the army,” Mama said dully. “Devorah, take Nechama outside and don’t bother me now.”

  I didn’t want to leave Mama. I wanted to stay with her and help her. And I wanted her to promise me that Papa would never leave us. But I led Nechama out very slowly. “Come on, Nechama, we have to go.”

  Outside everything felt different and strange. The forest nearby looked menacing, and the dried mud tracks worn by Papa’s cart seemed to lead only one way, away from us. Nechama played little games in the dust while I sat on a tree stump and kept my eyes on the open doorway to the house. I could see that Mama did little work. Finally she just sat very still on the doorstep and waited for Papa to come home. Nechama stopped playing. We all sat.

  Papa must have caught sight of us from a short distance, because he abandoned his horse and peddler’s cart on the hill, and ran down. “Chanah! Chanah, what is it?” he shouted. She held out the letter silently. They hurried inside together and shut the door without a word to us.

  Nechama and I sat in silence. The wind moaned in the forest. Then there was the sound of slow hoofbeats as Papa’s old horse came clop-clopping steadily to our house and stopped.

  “Soos!” I called out to him, grateful for any company. “You came home alone. Good boy, Soos.” The big animal looked directly at me for a moment and snorted loudly through the tunnels of his black nostrils. I clucked and smiled at him nervously. I had never taken care of the horse before, but I had watched Papa many times. “Be brave, Devorah,” I said aloud.

  Walking to him slowly, I reached up high to take hold of the bridle. He snorted again, and I had to force the smile to stay on my face. What if he bites my hand? I thought. Or steps on my toes?

  Soos didn’t seem interested in me. He snuffled disappointedly at the empty feed bag hanging on the fence post, and then slurped at some water at the bottom of his trough. I wasn’t quite seven yet, and I had to stretch up on my toes and strain to hook his reins over the fence post securely. Then I ran to the feed bin, pried up the heavy lid, and grabbed the tin cup lying inside. Filling it with grain, I carried it carefully over to the feed bag. I spilled only a little along the way, and some more when I poured it into the limp bag. By my third trip, the bag was bulging invitingly open and the horse lowered his head to push his big soft lips into the feed. When I was sure he was busy, I lifted the loop of the feed bag and hooked it over Soos’s sweaty neck just as Papa did, keeping my fingers away from his huge teeth. I was spurred on by Nechama’s look of silent admiration.

  It was beyond my strength to unhook the wooden cart, and I couldn’t manage to carry from the cart a pile of animal skins and two rolls of linen. But one by one I lifted out Papa’s lighter baskets and placed them neatly outside the closed door of the house. “What’s next?” I muttered. If I could find something else to do, I wouldn’t have to think about Papa and the army.

  “I’m thirsty,” Nechama whined.

  “That’s it! Help me with the
pump, Nechama,” I ordered, and together we pulled on the handle and pumped and pumped until the small bucket was full. I knew I could carry just that small bucket and no more. I filled a dipper of cold water for Nechama, and then stumbled back and forth to the horse, pouring each bucketful as carefully as I could into his low trough. The horse drank gratefully, and I patted his steaming rough flank with new affection. “We did it, Soos,” I said.

  The door creaked. Head down, Papa emerged from the house. First he saw his goods stacked at the door, then he glanced up to see his horse fed and watered. I ran to him as his strained face turned pink with surprise and pride.

  “My big girl. I see I can rely on you,” he said, and he hugged me tightly.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in his workday smell, loved even the pressure of his buttons against my cheek. Then Papa reached out to tousle Nechama’s curls, and he sent us inside while he unhitched the cart.

  After dinner, I lay awake. Papa and Mama were whispering and working together at the table. Keeping my eyes half-closed, I peeked toward the candlelight. Papa was writing laboriously on a piece of paper, reading a few words softly to Mama, then bending forward to write again. I fell asleep before they were finished.

  The next day Papa went off to work as usual, but he and Mama seemed anxious and distracted. The same thing happened for many days after that. As weeks passed, though, Papa and Mama seemed less worried.

  But I was not reassured. Questions twisted inside me. I wanted so badly to ask Mama. Each bedtime when she whispered the Shema with me at her side, looking out through the window at the silent village huddled in the moonlight, I felt the questions rising up, up, almost reaching my lips. And then at the last minute I pushed them down again. It would upset Mama to talk about what the letter had said. And the answer might be too hard for me to stand.

  Finally, one night, the words exploded. “Is the army going to take Papa, too, Mama?”

  There was silence. I couldn’t bear to look up. Then Mama bent down and hugged me.

  “No, we don’t think so, Devorahleh.” Her voice was shaky, and she kept her face in my hair. “Papa wrote and told them that he and Uncle Pinchas are twins. If two brothers are twins, the army only takes one.”

  Relief filled me. I felt so light I could float. Papa was not going away, Papa was not going away. I slipped between Mama’s dress and her apron, wound her apron tightly around me, and shivered with delight.

  Later, as I drifted off to sleep, I wondered why I had never known before that Papa and Uncle Pinchas were twins. It’s a good thing they are, I thought drowsily. Poor, poor Aunt Friedka.

  FROM PINSK TO WARSAW

  1921

  “I’m going with the nice man.”

  I stared at Nechama in shock. I had never heard my little sister state anything so strongly, never seen her so independent. We were standing in the hallway of the orphanage in Pinsk, the day after the man from Africa had arrived. In such a short time, she had latched on to his terrifying proposal.

  “I’m going to Africa,” Nechama repeated, her small fists clenched.

  Then she moved closer and stared at me with her big, appealing eyes. “Please come with me, Devorahleh. I want you to come, too.”

  “And if I don’t?” I asked, with real curiosity.

  Nechama didn’t hesitate for a moment. “I’m going,” she repeated again, and then once more. “I’m going with that man to that new place.”

  My heart lurched. I sat down on a little bench nearby and tried to think. There was a long silence.

  It wasn’t as if I myself didn’t feel drawn to Isaac Ochberg. He was warm and strong and gentle. But couldn’t he see that going to Africa meant my old life was over? Once we sailed across the huge seas, we’d never come back, that was certain.

  And where were we going? To a place where we knew no one and nothing, not even the language. I thought about the excited, frightened whispers I had heard coming from two older boys the previous night.

  “… lions and tigers,” Shlayma said.

  “Oh no,” Itzik corrected him proudly. “The man told me there are no tigers in Africa.”

  “Well, lions and elephants, then,” Shlayma conceded. “And what about cannibals? We might be eaten by cannibals.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  “Or sold as slaves,” Itzik offered.

  “Or drowned at sea,” Shlayma said, not to be outdone.

  “I’m not scared,” said a small boy’s voice, and they turned to stare at little Yankel. “I’m going to drink the milk an’ honey and get strong,” he announced.

  They looked at him in puzzlement, until Itzik let out a shriek of laughter. “He heard the man say Africa is a land of milk and honey like Palestine. What are you expecting, Yankel, rivers of warm milk?”

  “And honey dripping from the trees?” Shlayma chimed in mockingly.

  They laughed wildly, their fears making them hysterical. Then Yankel burst out crying. “I want my milk an’ honey. I want. Don’t laugh. Stop laughing.”

  Eventually Mr. Bobrow heard the uproar and swooped in to comfort Yankel and order everyone to sleep.

  After the other children had begun to snore, I slipped out of bed to stand alone at the window. I said the Shema, as usual, and my thank you to Aunt Friedka, as usual, and then it was time to talk. “Mama, I’m scared. I’m scared, Papa. I’m scared of—of—lions and cannibals and—Africa. If we go to Africa, how will we ever get home? I want to go home. But Panya Truda told us there was no one left. We can’t live alone at home—among those people who—We have no place left in Poland. What’s going to happen to us now, Papa? Mama?”

  Outside, I could see an old man picking his way through the rubble in the street. He was looking for something in the moonlight, perhaps something from the past, from before everything collapsed, but he wasn’t finding it.

  Now, sitting on my little bench and facing Nechama’s determination, I was being forced to decide: Europe or Africa? My little sister continued to stand, sturdily, very still, in front of me.

  She looks like a stranger, I thought. What has happened to her since we left home?

  I had never followed Nechama before; I had always led. But if I wasn’t sure about Africa, I was sure about something else. Mama would have said it, Papa would have said it, and I knew it in my heart: Wherever Nechama went, there went I.

  Then came a long journey from Pinsk on a slow, dirty train to Warsaw, the biggest city in Poland. There were twelve orphans in our group: Nechama and I and four others from the orphanage in Pinsk—Itzik, Shlayma, Nechama’s friend Malke, and little Yankel—plus six children, all girls, from an orphanage in Brest. None of us had ever been on a train before. The countryside moved across my eyes and disappeared. When I leaned forward to see where we had come from, I bumped my head on the smeared glass.

  The train seats were worn through in places, and I kept trying to push away a metal spring that was poking through the old leather into my leg. Nechama was squashed beside me in the crowded compartment. “Isn’t it wonderful that our own Mr. Bobrow is coming with us to South Africa?” I whispered to her.

  “I asked him to,” she murmured sleepily over the clacking of the wheels, her head rocking with the train’s movement.

  “Silly,” I retorted. “He’s not coming because you invited him. He wouldn’t leave his work at the orphanage for that. He’s coming because Mr. Ochberg is gathering two hundred children in Warsaw to take to South Africa, and he needs Mr. Bobrow’s help taking care of us all.”

  “Two hundred,” Nechama repeated, opening her eyes with interest for a minute. “Do you think there will be girls my age?”

  I didn’t bother to answer her question. Why did Nechama need more friends? Wasn’t I enough for her?

  But I did feel much better knowing that Mr. Bobrow would be with us all the way from the orphanage in Pinsk to the orphanage in South Africa. He was the person who had lifted us from the wooden cart when we arrived in Pinsk and led us to our
iron cots. He was the one who had written down my name and Nechama’s and those of our parents and our old village. He knew that much of my past. I turned to him, but he was talking with Isaac Ochberg.

  “Right now it’s Laya and Pesha I’m worrying about,” Mr. Ochberg was saying. “I don’t know how their eyes became so red and swollen so quickly, but it looks very contagious. If a health inspector gets on the train to check for diseases, he’s sure to suspect trachoma. We’ll be thrown off the train at the next station.”

  Instantly I was wide awake. Pressing my face against the glass, I began scanning each station platform carefully. And not very long after, I caught sight of a man wearing official-looking epaulets and a cap with a faded gold ribbon. There were many men in uniform in Poland, but this one hailed the train guard with a mixture of familiarity and authority before he swung himself up onto the train.

  I turned to Mr. Ochberg, who was reading some papers. “I think there’s an inspector,” I whispered. “He boarded the car behind us.”

  Mr. Ochberg and Mr. Bobrow glanced at each other.

  “It could be,” said Mr. Bobrow, pushing up his spectacles with an agitated gesture. “I’d better move Pesha and Laya forward. I’ll take a few little ones to make us less conspicuous. Children, some of you must come with me quickly. Laya, carry baby Gittel. You, Pesha, take Yankel. Nechama, Faygele, and Braindel, follow me closely.”

  Nechama stood up obediently, and without hesitating I jumped up and stood next to her.

  “Not you, Devorah,” Isaac Ochberg began. “You stay here and—”