by Uri Orlev
***
"Sasha, would you like to eat something different?"
It had turned into a game. Jurek was hiding something behind his back.
"Yes," Sasha said.
Jurek opened his hand. There was a slug in it. Sasha burst out laughing. He pushed Jurek to the ground and pretended to make him eat the gooey snail without a shell. The next day he got back by asking, "Jurek, would you like to eat something different?"
Jurek didn't know what to answer. Perhaps Sasha had some American cheese for him. He took a chance and said "yes." Sasha opened a hand. It held an earthworm. He opened the second and gave Jurek two cubes of sugar.
"Jurek, would you like to eat something different?"
"Yes."
Sasha held out his hands. They were empty.
"Come with me to the village," he said, pointing at some nearby houses.
Jurek conducted the negotiations. He struck a deal to swap sugar for a chicken. He and Sasha walked happily back to their camp and invited the medic to join them for some baked mud chicken.
"How about a game of checkers?" the medic said to Jurek when they had eaten.
Jurek won.
It was his first victory. His joy knew no bounds. The medic rose, handed him the checkerboard and the pieces, and said they were his.
"Take it and teach Sasha how to play," he said. "I'm leaving tomorrow."
He shook Jurek's hand warmly.
Jurek stayed with Sasha and his crew through the autumn and into the winter. By then he could speak enough Russian to be the unit's interpreter. Sasha took him along to the villages to barter.
When the ground frosted over, their unit moved to a village. Sasha's crew was billeted in a big hayloft that belonged to the Cherka family. After a while Sasha began to bring Pani Cherka gifts of food. She accepted them suspiciously. She knew that all the soldiers had their eyes on her daughter Christina, whom she guarded like a watchdog. One day Sasha asked Jurek to write Christina a note in Polish.
Jurek was upset. He feared he was about to lose Sasha just as he had lost Grzegorz and Marina.
"I can't write," he said.
"Fine. Then go talk to her when she's alone in the sheep pen or the barn. Tell her..." Sasha hesitated. He wasn't sure how to put it. "Tell her that Sasha says she's beautiful. And when she asks, who's Sasha, you'll point me out. I'll be standing in front of the hayloft, all right?"
"All right."
He carried out his mission successfully. The braided girl really asked, "Who's Sasha?"
"I'll show him to you."
Sasha was standing in front of the hayloft.
"That's him," Jurek said.
Sasha grinned and took a bow. Christina blushed and ran back to the barn.
"Good boy," Sasha said, patting Jurek's shoulder. "Would you like to eat something different?" He took some American cheese from his pocket.
One night Jurek discovered that Sasha was missing from their blanket. In the morning he asked, "Where were you last night?"
"I'll tell you someday."
"When?"
"When we get the order to move."
"To move where?"
"On to Germany."
"What about me?" Jurek asked.
"I'll think of something for you. Don't worry."
"But I want to come with you."
"You've already seen enough fighting. Remember those three German prisoners?"
Jurek remembered.
When winter came, he took his shoes from his knapsack and tried putting them on. To his surprise, they no longer fit him. Sasha brought a pair of army boots, stuffed them with paper, and laced them for him. Jurek was thrilled. Although the boots weren't new, they were in good condition and had studded soles. And when it snowed, Sasha brought him long army underwear and a heavy greatcoat.
"It's the smallest size I could find," he apologized.
"I don't need underwear," Jurek said, regarding the gift dubiously.
"Wear it. It will keep you warm. You can roll the tops down if it's too big. And there's a drawstring, see? Try it."
"Later," Jurek said.
Sasha put the coat on him, marked it like a tailor, and took in the waist and both sleeves. He hesitated before shortening the right sleeve. Even before Jurek could say anything, though, he cut it to the same length as the left sleeve.
"You can stick the end into your pocket," he said.
Jurek tried on the coat.
"It looks good," Sasha said. "Now peek through the window of the farmhouse and tell me if the Cherkas are sitting down to eat."
Jurek took a peek.
"Not yet."
"Tell me when they do."
When it was the family's suppertime, Jurek called Sasha. Sasha had a bottle of vodka.
"Come with me," he said.
He knocked on the door and they entered. Christina looked flustered. Her parents didn't know what to make of it. Pan Cherka saw the vodka and invited Sasha and Jurek to join them for supper. After grace, they all crossed themselves. The two grown-up men clinked glasses to toast the war's end and Hitler's death. They began to eat. Christina, blushing, sat by Jurek. She tried to help him to cut his food. Sasha said, "There's no need for that, Christina. He can manage by himself."
The two parents exchanged glances.
Sasha refilled the glasses. Now they drank a toast to Stalin and Mother Russia. Sasha poured some vodka for Jurek, but Jurek didn't want any. He had tried it once and it had burned his throat.
"To a free Poland!"
For the fourth toast, Sasha lifted his glass and said, "To Christina, the most beautiful girl in the world!"
He said to Jurek, "Tell them what I said."
Jurek translated.
This time the glances between Christina's parents were worried. Christina fled to the kitchen. Sasha said, "I've come to tell you that we're moving out."
Jurek was alarmed. "You are?"
"Just say what I ask you to."
Jurek waited for Christina to return from the kitchen.
"We're moving on to Berlin," Sasha said proudly.
They all understood that. He got to his feet and said grandly, "When the war is over, I'll return. With your permission, I want to marry Christina then."
Jurek translated.
Christina covered her face with her hands. There was a hush. Everyone held his breath and looked at her father.
"Do you agree to become a Catholic?" he asked.
"Yes," Sasha said.
That was that, then.
"We'll wait for you and pray for you," Pan Cherka said.
Pani Cherka clapped her hands with emotion.
"One more thing," said Sasha. "I want to leave the boy with you."
Jurek translated, embarrassed. Everyone looked at him.
"What's your name?" Pan Cherka asked.
"Jurek Staniak."
"Are you a Catholic?"
"Yes."
"Where did the Russians find you?"
"In the fields."
"You speak Russian well," Christina's mother said.
"I've been with them since last summer," Jurek told her.
There followed the usual questions about his parents, his village, and where he was during the war. He gave the usual answers.
"What can you do around a farm?"
"Everything—pasture the cows, tend the pigs, whatever you like."
"We'll take him," Pani Cherka said.
Pan Cherka nodded in agreement.
It was time to part. Sasha rose. Jurek rose to go with him.
"No," Sasha said. "You stay here."
Jurek was dumbfounded. "So soon?"
He sat down again. Sasha said goodbye to them all. He picked Jurek up and hugged him.
"You'll be fine here," he said. "These are good people."
"Would you like to eat something different?" Jurek asked.
Sasha was taken by surprise. He glanced at Jurek's clenched fist. Jurek opened it. In it was his cigarette lighter.
For a moment, Sasha hesitated. Then he kissed Jurek and took the gift.
"I'll walk you," said Christina, putting on her fur coat.
"But it's snowing," Pani Cherka objected.
"It's all right," Pan Cherka said. "Just don't go far."
Sasha shook Pan Cherka's hand. Then he kissed Pani Cherka's hands, and he and Christina stepped outside. Her parents hurried to the window. Jurek was behind them. Snow was falling. The two young people walked arm in arm down the street. Sasha's comrades were preparing to move out. They cheered when they saw him with Christina. The two hugged and kissed and Christina ran back to the house, red as a beet.
"Isn't Sasha Catholic?" Jurek asked.
"No," Pani Cherka said. "The Russians are different."
Sasha didn't look any different.
"Is Berlin far?"
"Don't ask so many questions."
"It's very far," Christina sighed.
"Don't worry about it," Pani Cherka said. "He's only a Russian. Who knows what kind of home he comes from?"
"Mama!" Christina protested.
"First let's see if he comes back," Pan Cherka said.
16. The War Is Really Over
In early spring of that year the Wisla overflowed its banks and flooded the entire region. Once the levees of the river were breached, there was nothing in the broad plain to stop the rampaging water, which rolled on for miles in all directions.
The cows in the barn began to bleat. Jan, the hired hand, woke up first. He jumped down from the hayrack on which he slept with Jurek and found himself in ankle-deep water.
"Jurek, wake up! There's a flood!"
From the stable came the frightened whinnies of the horses. The water had reached the animals' quarters first, because the farmhouse stood on a low rise.
Jurek groped in the darkness. Water was everywhere. "Where is it coming from?" he asked.
"The Wisla's overflowed. Go get the horses."
"The Wisla? It's far away."
"Don't talk now. Run! I'll get the cows."
Jurek waded through the water to the stable door. The horses were restless. They pawed at the water with their hooves as if they understood what was happening. He freed them and they bolted outside. Then he ran to the farmhouse, banged on the door, and shouted:
"Pan Cherka! There's a flood! There's a flood!"
A kerosene lamp shone yellow in the window. The door opened. Wojciech Cherka peered out and yelled, "Wife! There's a flood! Wake Christina!"
"The pigs!" shouted Pani Cherka.
Jan joined them, and they all splashed together to the pigsty. Everyone grabbed a piglet or two and brought it to the farmhouse. Oinking angrily, the mother sow trotted after them and ran into the house on their heels. Pan Cherka slammed the door. Water trickled through the cracks between the planks.
"Everyone up to the attic!" he ordered.
First they carried the piglets. Then they tried pushing the sow up the stairs. She balked and wouldn't move.
"Leave her alone," Pan Cherka said. "Bring up the furniture. She'll come by herself when the water gets high."
"What about the horses and cows?" Jurek asked Jan.
"When they have to, they'll swim. If they can find some high ground and keep from drowning, they'll come back. And don't ask so many questions, because Pan Cherka is going to smack you."
They began carrying things to the attic.
A gray, foggy morning found the sow floating in the downstairs room, half-propped on the stairs. The water had reached the windows. As soon as there was enough light to see, Jan and Pan Cherka pulled the sow up the stairs while Pani Cherka, Christina, and Jurek held her squealing piglets in the air to entice her. She oinked back at them and let herself be hauled to the safety of the attic.
The view from the attic window was like none Jurek had seen. Only the top branches of the trees in the nearby woods were visible. Nothing remained of the houses but the roofs. The neighbors were worse off then the Cherkas. They sat on their roofs, clinging to the chimneys. Some held babies or piglets. The rain kept coming down.
In the afternoon, a rescue team of Polish soldiers arrived in rubber boats. Jurek was excited to see soldiers in Polish uniforms. For the first time he really believed the war was over. The soldiers helped the villagers down from the roofs. In the end, a boat reached their attic.
"We're staying here," Pan Cherka told the soldiers through the attic window. "Just take the boy. He's not ours and I don't want to be responsible for him."
He picked Jurek up and passed him through the window to a soldier.
The soldier squeezed Jurek into the crowded boat between babies and piglets. They cast off from the house. Jurek turned to say goodbye to the Cherkas. Christina stuck her head through the window and waved.
They motored over the vast flood, past inundated villages and treetops. No one spoke. Everyone had his own worries and tried not to move to keep the boat from tipping and filling with water. They headed for a section of the Wisla where the levees had held and moored in a little harbor. A soldier tied the boat, and they climbed carefully out of it onto a wet wooden dock. The soldiers took them to a church.
"Where are your parents?" a soldier asked Jurek.
"I don't have any."
"I have orders to bring all the orphans to a children's home."
Jurek shrugged.
"Wait here," the soldier said. "Maybe there are others."
Jurek was gone by the time the soldier returned. He wanted a real home, not an orphanage.
He was in Warsaw. It was a large city with apartment buildings and shops in its center and country houses and small farms on its outskirts. Jurek headed for the outskirts. Everywhere he saw burned-out ruins and blackened trees with broken branches. A charred tank lay in a ditch. In a suburb called Wawer he came to a small farm, entered the yard, and looked around. There were some auxiliary buildings and a wagon. A large oak tree spread its bare branches over the thatched roof of the farmhouse. Jurek liked the place and knocked. A middle-aged man opened the door. Jurek couldn't tell from the looks of him if he was a farmer, a hired hand, or some sort of tradesman.
"Blessed be Jesus Christ," he said.
"Forever and ever, amen," the man answered.
Jurek glanced inside. There was a large room with a big bed. A kerosene lamp stood on a table. By the lit stove a woman sat knitting. She looked up at Jurek without stopping her work. A boy his age was eating at the table.
"Are you one of the flood victims?" the man asked.
"Yes," Jurek said.
"Come in. I'll give you something to eat."
Jurek sat by the boy. The man brought him a plate of food. Jurek began to eat. Exhausted from his sleepless night, he felt his eyes beginning to shut.
"The boy needs to sleep," the woman said.
She rose, took a blanket from the closet, handed it to Jurek, and told her son, "Tadek, take the lamp and show the boy to the barn."
"And don't start any fires," his father said. "And come back right away, do you hear?"
Tadek took the lamp from the table and led Jurek to the barn. It was a small barn with only four cows. There was no hayrack. Tadek shone the light on a corner with some straw. Jurek spread his blanket. He was asleep before Tadek returned to the house.
Jurek stayed with the Kowalskis. Pan Kowalski was a blacksmith by trade. Mostly, he shoed horses. Apart from that, he had a small farm with a vegetable garden, two horses of his own, and some pigs and chickens. Now that much of Warsaw lay in ruins after heavy fighting, which ended with the Russian advance continuing, there weren't many horses to shoe. Pan Kowalski worked mainly at hauling loads in his wagon, such as debris to be cleared and bricks for rebuilding. Tadek and Jurek helped. Sometimes they went into town with him and sometimes they stayed behind to take care of the animals. The one thing they refused to do was go to school. Each time Pan Kowalski tried to make them, they ran away.
On one of their trips to the city, Pan Kowalski pointed at a burned-out n
eighborhood and said:
"That was the Jewish ghetto."
Jurek couldn't believe his eyes. Suddenly it all came back to him: the streets, the houses, his parents, the blurred figures of his brothers and sisters. It was all gone.
Every Sunday he went with his new family to church. In the morning he washed in the horses' drinking trough, donned Tadek's second-best suit, and put on his Russian army boots.
One weekday morning, Tadek and his father went off in the wagon and Jurek stayed behind to help Pani Kowalski on the farm. Finishing his chores early, he went for a walk in the streets, hoping to find someone to play with. But all the children were in school, and after a while he found himself in front of a church. After a moment's deliberation, he entered. The church was empty, not the way it was on Sundays. There wasn't a sound. He sat down near the altar and looked around. A door creaked and a priest appeared. He was wearing an ordinary cassock, not the ornamented vestments used for mass.
"Playing hooky, eh?" the priest asked jokingly.
"No," Jurek said. "I was just passing by."
"Who are you?"
"I'm Jurek Staniak. I live with the Kowalskis."
"Oh, yes," the priest remembered. "You're one of the flood victims. Come, help me move a table."
He noticed Jurek's missing arm.
"Never mind," he said. "I'll do it myself."
Jurek was insulted. "I can do everything, Father."
The priest realized his mistake. He nodded and let Jurek help him carry a table to his room.
"Would you like some tea?" he asked.
"Yes, please."
The priest made tea and put a plate of cookies on the table. They both sat down.
"How old are you?"
Jurek thought.
"About ten."
"Have you been confirmed?"
Jurek knew what being confirmed was. He had seen boys and girls in the villages going to church for it. The girls looked like princesses in their white dresses and crowns of flowers, and even the toughest boys looked like gentlemen.
"No," he said.
"We're having confirmation for a large group of children soon. I'll speak to your adopting family."
Did that mean he would he look like those children? It was hard to believe.
Subsequently, he returned to the church several times. He dusted the objects in the sacristy, hoed the garden, sawed wood for the stove in the kitchen, and chatted with the priest over tea.