by Uri Orlev
Twice a week someone came with a food package from Pani Herman's farm. The packages were full of good things—hard-boiled eggs, meat, even cake. Now and then Pani Hermann came herself. She never found Jurek in his bed. He had made friends with many of the patients, who knew him and joked with him. One old man taught him to play checkers, and they spent hours at it by his bed. Pani Herman laughed when she saw the two of them.
One day Jurek passed the maternity ward, peered inside, and saw a familiar face. For a moment, he couldn't place it. It belonged to the wife of the couple who had turned him in to the Gestapo. The woman saw him, too. Soon the attitude toward him in the hospital had changed. Patients looked away when he passed. A package disappeared before it reached him.
The old patient went on playing checkers with him.
"Why did they amputate your leg?" Jurek asked him.
"I have diabetes. How about you?"
"I had a bastard for a doctor," Jurek said.
"So I've heard," said the man. "I was told he wouldn't operate because you're a Jew."
"I'm not."
The man didn't argue. He just said, "Jurek, the Gestapo will come for you. You know what they do to Jews. Go to Dr. Zurawski. Talk to him."
Jurek went to the doctor's office.
"Yes, Jurek. How is your arm?"
"The one I don't have? I don't know. The one I have is fine."
The doctor smiled. "What can I do for you?"
"Send me back to the village, Doctor."
"I can't."
"Why can't you?"
"I'll tell you the truth. I had a call from the Gestapo. They told me to keep you here until they come for you."
Jurek tried planning an escape. Yet not only did it turn out that there was a guard at the front door, but the nurses had no clothes for him.
"We burned them," he was told. "They were full of lice."
He waited impatiently for the next visit from the village. When a farmhand brought him a package with regards from Pani Herman, he pleaded, "Take me with you."
"Are you allowed to leave?"
"I have to leave."
"I'll ask the doctor," the farmhand said.
"I can't let him go," said Dr. Zurawski. "I have orders from the Gestapo to hold him here."
"Doctor," the man said. "I've heard that Jurek is a Jew. That's hard for me to believe, because we got him from the Gestapo. But if it's true, you know what the Gestapo will do to him."
The doctor frowned. "Medically speaking," he said, "he can go."
"Then I can take him?"
"No. But there's a big window in the bathroom on the floor above us. It faces the back of the building. And I haven't said anything."
Jurek and the farmhand went to the corridor. "Wait beneath the window," Jurek told him.
"But how will you get down?"
"I'll find a way."
Jurek climbed the stairs and entered the bathroom. There was a big window just like the doctor said. He opened it and looked out. The farmhand was below, looking up. Jurek climbed onto the window sill and called down, "Catch me!"
He jumped.
The farmhand caught him. They both fell to the ground. The man rose, picked Jurek up, and ran into the street with him.
Nowy Dwur was on the banks of the Narew River, near where it joined the Wisla. The farmhand carried Jurek to the river and put him in a rowboat. He freed the mooring line and began to row. They headed downstream and moved quickly. It was a whole new experience for Jurek. The farmhand told him to take the rudder.
"Me?"
"It's easy."
He took the rudder.
"I'll say left, right, or straight ahead. Can you tell your left hand from your right?"
The man regretted the question at once. But Jurek just grinned. "Of course I can. It's easy to remember now."
Jurek quickly saw that he could steer with one arm. He sat watching the tugboats and small craft on the river.
"You're bleeding," the farmhand suddenly said in alarm.
The bandages on Jurek's stump were soaked in blood, staining his hospital gown.
"I must have hurt myself when I jumped."
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Pani Herman will take care of you, don't worry," the farmhand assured him.
Pani Herman, too, was alarmed by the blood stains. She relaxed only when she changed the bandage and saw it wasn't serious. Instead of sending Jurek back to sleep in the barn, she put him up in a small room in the house.
"You could still mind the cows," she told him the next day. "But when my boyfriend hears that you ran away from the hospital, he'll come looking for you. Now that you only have one arm, I don't know what he'll decide to do with you."
She had her seamstress make Jurek a shirt and a jacket with one short sleeve. The missing sleeve felt like an insult. Then she brought him socks and new shoes.
"I found shoes your size," she told him.
For the first time in his life, Jurek owned a pair of shoes that fit him. Pani Herman made him sit while she laced them. Then she hung a knapsack on his shoulder.
"Don't worry," she said, seeing the concern in his eyes. "Everything you had in the pockets of your old pants is in here. There's a bottle of water, too. Do you need anything else?"
"Yes," Jurek said. "Some rope, matches, and my stick."
Pani Herman sent someone to bring him a length of rope, several boxes of matches, and his walking stick.
"God look after you," she said.
Jurek kissed her hand and left.
12. With One Hand
Jurek was afraid to go back to the forest. What would he do there? How would he survive? How could he climb a tree or hunt with his slingshot? He could live for a while on berries and mushrooms. But he could also work as a cowherd and earn his keep, if only he could find someone to take a one-armed boy.
As soon as he had put some distance between himself and Pani Herman's farm, he took off his new shoes and put them in his knapsack. He knew he would need them in the winter, if he wasn't caught before then.
The harvested fields were yellow in the early-autumn sun. The forest was green in the distance. Purple heather grew in the untitled fields. Jurek followed a dirt path between them and prayed silently. Not in the words he had learned from the pretty woman. He simply asked God to help him, repeating over and over, O God, O God, O God, O God, O God...
Once he had been a Jewish boy. He hadn't forgotten that. Then, too, he had known there was a God. His father and oldest brother had prayed to Him every morning, tying a black box to their foreheads and winding a leather thong around their arms. Although he couldn't remember the words for these things, he could picture the two of them in their white shawls, swaying back and forth in prayer. Sometimes they took him to the synagogue. That was where the Jewish God lived. But now God lived in the churches of little villages and there were three of Him, for he was also Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Jurek touched the cross and the medallion of the Madonna around his neck. How could they have let the young doctor refuse to save his arm?
He came to a low wall ahead by the side of the path. It had a gate with a large metal cross. He went and peered through it. Inside was a cemetery filled with crosses of all kinds and shapes. He opened the gate and entered. Apart from the tombstones, there were several structures that looked like little houses. These were old mausoleums in which nobles and rich landowners had been buried. He approached one of them and tried its low metal door. The door creaked and opened a bit. He pushed again and forced his way inside. He was in a room with two stone benches, one on each side. An old stone coffin lay on one of them. In the middle of the room was a long rectangular pit with a mound of earth. Broken pieces of stone were scattered on it. Jurek tried to open the coffin but couldn't. He went outside and found a shovel without a handle. After many attempts, he managed to pry open the coffin's lid. He feared finding a corpse and hoped to find a treasure. But there was neither. Except for a few bones, the coffin wa
s empty. He threw them in the pit, climbed into the coffin, and lay down. It was comfortable enough for a boy his size.
Jurek decided to made this place his home. He went outside and found a well at the far end of the cemetery. At least he wouldn't die of thirst here.
The next day he left his knapsack with what remained of the food in the coffin and left the cemetery early. He didn't want to bump into anyone visiting a grave. He spent the day in the forest and came back at night to sleep. When the food was gone, he foraged for vegetables in the nearby villages. Coming across a field of kohlrabi, he bent to dig up a few plants. Suddenly he heard a shout, and a man came running toward him. Turning to flee, he was shocked to see that he had lost partial control of his body and could no longer run and hurdle obstacles as before. The loss of his arm had affected his sense of balance. Though he managed to get away, he spent the next days practicing running and jumping to see how best to do them. Using his slingshot was out of the question. The results with his left hand were so dismal that he soon gave up.
The autumn rains set in. The trees lost their leaves. The berries disappeared from the forest. Seeing the wild boar eat the acorns and horse chestnuts that fell from the trees, he tried roasting these in a fire and eating them, but they weren't edible. Mostly he lived off unharvested vegetables and potatoes left in the gardens. If it was raining and he couldn't light a fire, he ate the potatoes raw.
His favorite occupation was playing with the rope. Using his mouth and feet, he taught himself to tie and untie knots. One day he decided to climb a tree. He heaved one end of the rope over a branch, knotted the two ends, and pulled himself upward. On his first try he slipped and almost fell, grabbing on to a branch at the last second. But after a day of experimenting, he found a system that worked. If he ever had to return to the forest, he would be able to sleep in the trees again.
His success with the rope restored a measure of his self-confidence. If only he dared, he could do many of the things he used to do. It simply took patience, as the nun in the hospital had told him. One day he decided it was time to look for work in the villages.
He opened his knapsack, took the shoes, and put them on. Tying the laces was a problem, because he couldn't raise his foot high enough to grab hold of them with his teeth. But he had an idea. He pulled the lace from the shoe and reinserted it with one end long and the other short. Now he could grip the long end with his teeth, get his foot into the shoe, and knot the short end. He felt proud of this solution. His knapsack on his shoulder, he set out full of hope, tapping with his stick on the tree trunks and running it over the bushes as if they were the picket fences of Blonie.
All at once he found himself facing a big German shepherd dog. Before he knew it he was on the ground and the dog was pinning him, its two front paws on his chest. Panting heavily, it opened a toothy mouth and stuck out a long tongue. Jurek tried to move. The dog growled menacingly. He lay still. A German soldier came up and called off the dog. It obeyed him at once. He hauled Jurek to his feet and said, "So it's you! You're just the person we're looking for."
They walked in silence with Jurek in the middle, flanked by the German and the dog. Although the German did not hold on to him, Jurek knew he had no chance of escaping. After a while, the soldier began to speak. It wasn't clear if he was talking to Jurek, the dog, or himself.
"If I bring you alive to the Gestapo," he said, "I'll get a commendation for being a good soldier. What good will that do me? And if I kill you and bring you dead to the Gestapo, I'll also get a commendation for being a good soldier. And what good will that do me? What do you think, Rex?"
The dog raised its head and looked at him.
They were near the edge of the forest. The soldier left the path, stepped into the bushes, and bent to lift a rusty iron trapdoor. Descending underground, he told Jurek to follow him. Jurek peered inside. There was an iron ladder, which he climbed down. Below was a bunker with a high window that was too covered with shrubbery to let in much light. There was a bench, a battered chair, and some old army blankets and mattresses along one wall. An open metal cabinet contained a bottle of water and some tins of food. On the shelf above them was a loaf of bread. Obviously, the soldier spent much of his time here.
The German opened a tin, cut a thick slice of bread, spread some meat on it, and handed it to Jurek. He put some meat in a bowl for Rex. The dog just looked at it.
"Good dog," the soldier said. "Eat!"
Rex wolfed down the bowl.
The German took the rest of the meat for himself and sat down on the bench beside Jurek. The three of them ate in silence. When he was finished eating, the German took out a pack of cigarettes.
"Do you smoke?"
A chill ran down Jurek's spine.
"No," he said.
But the soldier didn't look as if he was about to kill him. He took a cigarette lighter from his pocket. Jurek looked at it admiringly.
"Werner," the soldier said, pointing at himself.
"Jurek," said Jurek.
The soldier took out his wallet and showed Jurek a photograph of a woman and two children.
"My wife and kids," he said.
The woman was young and looked nice. The children, a boy and a girl, smiled at Jurek from the photograph. Jurek smiled back.
The soldier laughed. He kissed the photograph and said proudly, "My family! Where is your family?"
Jurek did his best to answer in a German that was more a mixture of Yiddish and Polish:
"We were five. Three boys and two girls. They may all be dead. I saw my father killed in a field. My mother ... I don't know."
The soldier shook his head sadly.
"War," he said, cursing it. "It's just my luck to have caught a blond, one-armed Jewish boy. What is a blond, one-armed Jewish boy? He's only a boy. And what am I? I'm only a soldier. Isn't that so, Rex?"
The dog raised its head. Werner went on talking. Jurek didn't understand very much. Here and there he made out a word. God. People. What will be the end?
Before leaving, the soldier told him he could use the bunker all he wanted. "Just close the door when you leave. I'll be back."
A few days later he came back with more tins. He didn't come at regular intervals. Sometimes he slept there. Conversation was difficult. Jurek's German wasn't good enough and Werner knew even less Polish. He made up for it by slapping Jurek on the shoulder or patting him on the head and giving him candy or chocolate. Jurek looked forward to each visit. In between, he missed the soldier more and more. It was hard to say goodbye. He knew that was coming when Werner started looking at his watch.
He had an idea. Taking a crate, he drew a checkerboard on it with the help of some charred wood he had found. Then he collected twenty-four acorns, blackened half of them, and waited. Eventually, Werner and Rex appeared. The dog ran happily to Jurek. Werner put some new tins of food in the closet and placed a loaf of bread on the bench. Then he caught sight of the surprise. He grinned broadly and patted Jurek's head. After eating they sat down to a game of checkers.
Werner always had time for at least three games. Whenever Jurek beat him, he was as happy as Jurek.
One day Jurek came back from the forest and found a loaf of bread and two new tins of food. Werner's lighter was lying on one of them. He felt heartbroken. He knew he would never see the German soldier again.
***
Jurek remained in the bunker until he finished the food. Then he went to look for farm work.
In the first village he came to, a gang of boys sicced their dog on him. He tried to run but the dog was too fast. He turned and struck it on the snout with his stick, the way he once saw Avrum do. The dog yowled and ran off. But the boys continued to hector him and throw stones until he was out of the village.
A long walk brought him to the next village. It looked familiar. Taken aback, he stopped to regard the houses. Suddenly he heard shouts. A group of German soldiers had noticed him and was running in his direction. But now he knew where he was. Without
hesitating, he ran to the pretty woman's house and knocked. She opened the door, took one look at him, and sank to the floor with a groan.
"Hide me, ma'am!" he cried. "They're after me."
The woman pulled herself together. She led Jurek inside and opened a trapdoor in the kitchen. He climbed into the cellar and she shut the door and poured water on the floor to wash away his footprints.
The Germans burst inside and began to search.
"Who are you looking for?" she asked.
"The one-armed Jewish boy."
"I haven't seen any boy."
"We saw him run in here."
"No one is here," the woman insisted.
The soldiers combed the house, sticking their bayonets wherever a child might have been hiding. They seemed to take pleasure in the damage they did. One bayoneted a straw basket in which a hen was sitting on her eggs.
"Are you going to hand him over or not?" they asked.
"There's no one here," the woman repeated.
The Germans were furious. They beat her, dragged her out of the house, and set it on fire. Then they torched the whole village.
Jurek sat huddled in darkness. He heard the woman's screams, the Germans' curses, and the heavy steps of boots. Screams came from everywhere. The cellar filled with smoke. He heard heavy objects tumbling to the floor above him. He didn't know they were the rafters of the house. It was hard to breathe. He was gasping for air. After what might have been long hours or only a few minutes, the trapdoor opened and he saw light.
"You can come out," said the woman. "Jurek? Are you all right? You can come out. They're gone."
He climbed out of the cellar. He hardly recognized her. She was not the same woman who had opened the door for him a short while before. She was old and beaten, and her clothes were torn. He looked in horror at the ruined, half-burned house.
"Is this because of me?" he asked, racked by spasms of coughing.
She didn't answer. She took him outside, scooped some water from a puddle, and washed his face with it. Then she washed her own face. He looked around. The village was no longer there. The houses stood charred and smoking. Some were still burning. People stood helplessly in the street. Farmers carried water from the well and threw it on the smoldering ruins. Women wailed.