by Uri Orlev
He pointed to the smoking village with horror. "Is this because of me?" he asked again.
"No. It's not because of you. You may have been the reason they burned my house first. But they've been here for the past three days. They know we helped the partisans. They beat us, they shot us, and today they burned our village. What happened to your arm?"
"It was caught in a machine."
"Jurek, I can't help you anymore. You have to go now. And don't come back. I've had all I can take. Do you understand? I can't take any more of this. I don't even have food to give you. Just keep walking east. Do you know where east is? It's where the sun rises in the morning. That's where the Russians will come from. Dear Jesus, save this boy from harm."
She crossed herself. Big tears ran down her cheeks.
Who were the Russians? He didn't ask.
13. An Unknown Soldier
He walked toward the east, keeping close to the villages by the edge of the forest. He never entered them during the day. He was known and on the Wanted list. His third day on the road gave him additional proof of this. As he was thinking of how old, stooped, and crushed the pretty woman had become in a few minutes, he saw two Germans on horseback coming toward him. He recognized them at once. They were the soldiers who had chased him after he escaped from Gestapo headquarters. He pulled his hat over his eyes and kept walking while turning his right side away from them. It seemed to work. They passed him and rode on. Each time he turned around to look, they were smaller against the background of the cloudy sky. Yet suddenly they stopped, wheeled, and galloped toward him. He left the road and sprinted toward the forest. As he reached the tree line, a horse-drawn wagon piled with firewood came toward him. Driving it was Werner. Jurek ran to him with relief and cried, "Quick, hide me! They're after me!"
But up close he saw it wasn't Werner at all. It was an unknown soldier. The hat and uniform were the same, but not the face. For a second, Jurek froze. Before he could get a grip on himself, the soldier grabbed him by the collar, hoisted him into the wagon, pushed him under the seat, and sat down on it.
The two mounted soldiers galloped up. Only now did the driver of the wagon realize who Jurek was hiding from. Their Gestapo uniforms were easily recognizable.
"Have you seen a blond, one-armed Jewish boy?" they asked.
"Yes," the soldier said, pointing to the forest. "He went that way."
Jurek heard the horses gallop off. The wagon lurched slowly out of the forest and onto the paved road. The driver whistled. After a while he asked in broken Polish:
"Where to?"
"Where are you going?" Jurek asked from under the seat.
The soldier laughed. "To Nowy Dwur."
"That's good enough for me," Jurek said. He thought for a minute and asked, "Is that across the Wisla?"
"Yes."
"That's very good." This time Jurek spoke German.
"You know German?"
"A bit."
The soldier stopped the wagon, cleared some room amid the firewood, and moved Jurek to it from his place beneath the seat.
"Lie down here," he said.
He took off his coat and covered him. "Now no one will see you."
He whipped the horses.
"Are you really a Jew?"
"No," Jurek said.
"Tell the truth."
"No. I'm not."
"What's your name?"
"Jurek Staniak."
"I mean your real name."
Jurek paused to reflect. He couldn't remember it.
"I've forgotten," he said.
The soldier resumed whistling. After a while he asked, "Are you hungry?"
"Yes."
He took a large sandwich from a box by his feet and gave it to Jurek. When Jurek had finished eating and lain down again, the soldier asked what happened to his arm.
Jurek told him.
"Where will you go in Nowy Dwur?"
"I'm not going anywhere in Nowy Dwur. I'll get off before that. As soon as we cross the Wisla."
"Why do you want to cross the Wisla?"
"Because everyone around here knows me."
"The one-armed Jewish boy?"
"Yes," Jurek said.
The traffic on the road grew heavier. Farm wagons passed in both directions. German army trucks went by. There were military motorcycles with sidecars and an occasional soldier or Polish worker on a bicycle. They reached the bridge over the Wisla and crossed it. The rattle of the wheels on the wooden bridge made Jurek sit up to look.
"Lie down," the German said sternly.
On the other side of the bridge, he stopped the horses and helped Jurek to get out. He reached into his box and gave him another sandwich. "For the road," he said.
"Thank you very much," Jurek told him.
"God look after you, boy."
The soldier climbed back on the wagon and drove off. Jurek walked quickly away from the road and found a dirt path that wound between fields and meadows. He gazed at the horizon. Here and there were what looked like small woods, but nowhere did he see the reassuring black line of a large forest. The small town of Nowy Dwor was at his back. He walked on, trying to put his painful memories behind him.
It began to rain. Not until evening did he spy the smoke of chimneys spiraling up to the low, cloudy black sky. He tramped through mud until he reached the village. Its thatched roofs were blurry in the fog. He came to a farm. Going to the door of the farmhouse, he knocked. A farmer opened, regarded him hesitantly, and let him into the house. Two young girls and a middle-aged woman were sewing by the stove. Jurek politely doffed his cap and greeted them.
The women greeted him back.
"Help him out of his jacket," the woman said. "Sit the boy at the table."
The farmer helped Jurek out of his jacket and hung it by the stove to dry. One of the girls filled a plate from a bowl on the table and gave it to Jurek. On it were potatoes with sour cream, cooked carrots, and an omelet with large slices of sausage. Jurek didn't look up until he was finished eating.
The questions began. He was used to them. He told them his name and his story. Then he laid his head on the table and shut his eyes.
"The boy is tired," the woman said.
"Come," said the farmer. "I'll put you to bed."
His wife gave him a nightshirt and two blankets. He took a lantern and ran through the rain with Jurek to the hayloft. Jurek heard a loud banging, as if someone were firing bullets at the roof.
"What's that?" he asked in a fright.
"What's what?" The farmer didn't know what he meant.
"That noise..."
The farmer laughed.
"It's the rain on the tin roof," he said.
"How can anyone sleep with that noise?" Jurek asked.
"You'll get used to it. You can't sleep in the hayrack in the barn because there are bags of seed in it."
The farmer waited for Jurek to make his bed and returned to the house. Jurek was left alone in the dark. He took off his wet clothes, put on the nightshirt, and lay down beneath the blankets. Yet he couldn't fall asleep. He had never heard rain drumming on a tin roof before. Although in the end his fatigue got the best of him, he kept waking from time to time, the sound of the rain drifting in and out of his dreams. One dream was an old one. In it he was climbing a tree. Suddenly he slipped and reached out to grab a branch. But the hand he reached with belonged to his missing arm and he fell. The falling woke him. He clutched at the hay beneath him and let out a horrible moan. He opened his eyes. But it wasn't he who had moaned. The moans were coming from the darkness. Two beams of light were moving toward him.
"Aaaooowwww ... Aaaooowwww..."
Jurek jumped up and ran for dear life. He crossed the yard and burst into the farmhouse. The last embers in the stove threw some light on the floor. He sat shaking with fear. The creak of the door woke the farmer, who stepped out of the bedroom. Seeing the apparition in white by the stove, he crossed himself fearfully and exclaimed, "Mama! What are you doing
here?"
Several days previously, it seemed, the farmer's mother had died. Now he was sure he was looking at her ghost.
"It's just me," Jurek said. "Jurek Staniak."
The farmer grabbed him, hit him, and threw him from the house. "Go to sleep!" he yelled.
Jurek returned reluctantly to the hayloft. He was wide awake. Groping his way to his bed of straw, he found his pants, took Werner's lighter from a pocket, and lit it. Two cats were lying on his blanket. He crept under it with both of them, repeating out loud in as deep a voice as he could muster, "Mama! What are you doing here?"
He burst into laughter.
The next morning, seeing the farmer and his younger daughter near a wheelbarrow of mash for the pigs, he went up and asked for work.
"How can you work with one arm?" the farmer asked.
"I can do anything. Whatever you need done."
"Can you push this wheelbarrow to the pigsty?" the farmer asked.
"Sure," Jurek said. "I'll show you."
He took his rope, doubled it, measured off the distance from his right shoulder to the handle of the wheelbarrow, made a sheepshank with the help of his feet, and looped one end of the rope around the handle and the other over the shoulder. He now had a second arm. The farmer and his daughter watched curiously. Jurek seized the other handle with his good arm and straightened up. Although he had never done it before, he managed to keep the wheelbarrow on an even keel while pushing it safely over the planks to the pigsty.
"Papa, let's take him," the girl said.
"No," the farmer replied. "What you just did was impressive, but I need someone with two hands."
"I'll help him," said the girl.
"You'd better remember you said that, Marina," her father told her.
He turned to Jurek.
"Take that bucket and fill the trough."
14. Marina and Grzegorz
Stanislaw Boguta didn't give Jurek special consideration for being without an arm. He treated him like any boy given food and board for his labor. He assigned him every kind of chore and hit him when he did something wrong. Without intending to, he helped Jurek in his struggle to be normal.
When Jurek kept complaining about the sound of the rain on the roof, Marina and her mother cleared part of the hayrack in the barn for him. Reached by rungs on the wall, it was high enough above the floor to keep the cows from getting at it. The warmth they gave off was a natural heating system. Jurek took the two cats from the hayloft, and they continued to sleep with him.
He soon realized that Marina was her mother's favorite. Clara, the oldest daughter, was closer to her father. Perhaps this was why all eyes were on Pani Boguta when she served the meat at Sunday dinner. Yet try as she might to give everyone the same size portion, Clara would angrily declare, "You've gone and given Marina the best part again!"
Marina would switch her plate with Clara's, and Clara would angrily snatch her plate back again.
Stanislaw Boguta was bored by the winter days, on which there was little to do. Tired of making the rounds of the house and yard to find something for his daughters and Jurek to do, he would harness the horse to a sled if the farm was not snowed in and drive into town to sit with his friends in the tavern.
This left Clara in charge. She never allowed Jurek to go play with the village boys before he had finished all his chores—feeding the pigs and chickens, collecting the eggs, giving the cows and horses fresh hay—and would invent new tasks if she thought he had finished too soon.
"Go chop some wood, Jurek," she might say.
Although he could chop wood with one arm, it took him a long time.
"Aren't you done yet?" she would ask.
"Leave him alone," Marina would say, coming to his defense.
"Now sort potatoes."
Jurek went to the storeroom to sort potatoes. Clara came, took a look, and berated him for a careless job. He sorted them again and tried slipping away when he was done, but she was waiting for him outside.
"Go fetch some firewood!"
Not having two arms for the wood, he tied it with a rope and carried it on his back. One day a poorly tied knot came apart and the wood fell in the snow. Marina hurried out to help Jurek pick it up and bring it into the house. Then, while Clara watched disapprovingly, she told him he was free.
"Clara hates everyone because she's not married," she said to him with a giggle.
Marina was as good as her word. One morning the wheelbarrow turned over as Jurek was pushing it to the pigsty along the icy planks. Pan Boguta cuffed him as usual. From then on, every morning and evening, Marina fed the pigs. If not for her, Jurek would have had to go elsewhere despite the snow and the cold.
The village children liked to build snowmen with coals for eyes and a carrot for a nose. Jurek rarely joined them, because it was a morning game and he was busy. Snowball fights, though, went on throughout the short winter days. There was also a hill at the end of the village, down which the children sledded with merry whoops. Some used boards and others had homemade sleds. Despite his handicap, Jurek was athletic; well-liked because of his good nature, he was welcome in all the children's games. If he couldn't get away from Clara's sharp eyes before dark, he'd sit by the stove with the women, watching them sew, launder, or iron until it was time to go to sleep in the barn.
One Sunday a young man came riding up and tied his horse to the fence. Marina, looking out the window, saw him enter the yard. "Grzegorz!" she shouted, running to him happily.
Pan Boguta followed her outside, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her back into the house. He gave the young man an unfriendly look and said, "You can come court Clara, if you want. Marina is too young."
When the youngster was gone he said to Marina, "He's just a carpenter. He has no land and he isn't from these parts. I don't want you going out with him. If I catch you with him, I'll lock you in the house. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes when I get hold of him."
"But why can he court Clara?" Marina asked.
"If Clara would like him to, I have no objection," her father said. "Better a carpenter's wife than an old maid."
Clara burst into bitter tears. It was the first and last time that Jurek ever felt sorry for her.
Jurek knew Grzegorz. He was the young man who said hello to Marina every Sunday in church. Jurek saw the passionate glances they exchanged during the service. One day Marina asked Jurek to lag behind the next time they came out of church.
"Grzegorz will give you a note," she said. "When nobody is looking, you'll pass it to me. Can you read?"
"No."
Marina was happy to hear that. From then on Grzegorz handed a note to Jurek every Sunday, and Jurek passed it to Marina. Before the winter was over, Grzegorz began coming to the farm at night. Sunday night was his usual time. Marina would slip out of the house and wait for him in the barn. Since she had no one else to talk to it about, she bared her heart to Jurek.
"He's awfully good-looking, isn't he?"
Jurek didn't know if Grzegorz was good-looking or not, but he agreed anyway.
"I once saw a closet he made for the parents of a friend of mine," Marina went on. "And a coffin he made for our neighbor. He's an artist. I tell you, Jurek, he has hands of gold. And a brain, too! I love him. I don't care what my father says. He can do what he wants. I'll elope and marry him. It's all Clara's fault."
It would be sad if Marina left, Jurek thought.
Each time Grzegorz came, they stood embracing each other in the darkness by the cows. Eventually, Jurek fell asleep. When he awoke again, they were still locked in an embrace.
"Aren't you cold?" he once asked Marina.
"No," she said. "Love warms you, even in the winter."
One night they asked Jurek to sleep in the hayloft.
"We'll wake you later and you'll come back to the barn," they said.
Although Jurek would have slept anywhere for Marina's sake, he was curious. What could they be doing there in the hayrack, under his blanke
ts?
One night his curiosity got the better of him. Quietly, he sneaked back into the barn and hid among the cows. It was too dark to see. But he heard Marina and Grzegorz whispering and making noises. While he wasn't sure what they were doing, he was excited in a strange new way. He went back to the hayloft and lay there thinking. He could remember sleeping with his mother and being woken and told in the middle of the night, "Srulik, move to your father's bed."
Half-conscious, he had changed beds and fallen asleep at once.
He was thinking so hard now that he sat up. He recalled a conversation between his big brothers. One of them said, "Papa tossed Mama his hat tonight and she didn't toss it back."
They laughed, then noticed him listening curiously.
"Srulik, do you know what happens when Mama keeps Papa's hat?"
"He wears another one," Srulik said.
They laughed harder. Now, in the hayloft, Jurek realized something was eluding him. He racked his brain to understand what it was. Was it the same thing Marisza had meant when she said, "You'll understand when you're older"? He didn't want to wait that long. A thought crossed his mind. No, he told himself. No, it can't be. Then he fell asleep and didn't awake until Grzegorz came to take him back to the barn.
One moonlit winter night, after Grzegorz had returned him to the hayloft, Jurek waited a while and crept back to the barn. The moonlight glittered on the snow and all was bright. He hid among the cows. Grzegorz and Marina lay beneath the blankets. Their clothes hung on the ladder rungs. He heard footsteps crunching through the snow. Peering out, he saw Clara. He ran to the hayrack and whispered:
"Marina, don't move. Clara's here."
He crawled under the blanket with the two of them.
"Jurek?" Clara called from the doorway.
"What?"
"Aren't you asleep?"
"You just woke me."
"Have you seen Marina?"
"No."
"Whose horse is tied to the gate?"
Grzegorz had been careless. You could get away with things like that on a dark winter night, but not on a night like this.