by John R Burns
‘I just know I would be absolutely hopeless.’
‘My men are all Jews. They would help, would guide you. You can draw, so where’s the difference?’
‘I’m not good with my hands, not practical and I know I would just get everything wrong. Please uncle, don’t ask.’
‘It’s just a suggestion.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re a funny one Leon. For God almighty’s sake, don’t you turn out like your father, he, bless him, lives in a world that doesn’t exist.’
One side of the work shed was open onto the rest of the yard where carts and trucks were constantly on the move bringing in fresh supplies. There was always the smell of fresh sawdust and the oil used for softening the wood. Tools hung from the walls of the long work shed. Snow flurried across the lamp light. There were five craftsmen and three apprentices. They all knew him. He would often visit and sit there sketching them, remembering prints he had seen of some of Van Gogh’s figures working in the fields.
The wood glowed yellow in the light as the sky darkened and the men put on their coats and hats.
‘Tell your uncle to give us more money,’ was one of the requests when Leon was visiting.
‘Your uncle says you’ve not the brains to work here.’
‘Better than these lads starting who come every morning with eyes like pee holes in the snow.’
‘With your uncle we spend more time mending his drink shop than anything else.’
‘Any excuse for a quick swallow,’ muttered old Moses who had been working the longest in the yard. He would be silent for hours and then come out with some comment before going back into his silent shell. Leon enjoyed the sense around the old man of slowness and carefulness. Nothing was hurried. Everything was done to the best finish. Only once had Leon managed to capture something of the old man’s wrinkled face, a hurried drawing that emphasised his heavy brows and thick mouth.
It was the same with the rest of the men. They all took pride in their work. Leon knew that they carved their initials on the inside of the most important things they made. Their jokes were to pass the time. Leon loved to listen to their banter from one to the other. It was the apprentices who came off worse. They were no match for the older men when it came to a quick comment or joke.
But the snow was thickening. Leon had been at the work yard since finishing school for the day and the weather was worsening. Across the plains it was the winter winds bringing the snow from the East. He imagined the huge distances over which the icy winds had travelled. He stood outside the shed feeling his way into the thousands of miles of cold darkness in which his town Volnus and this work place was a tiny fragment. Here everything human was surrounded by the empty vastness. In a few weeks the roads would be blocked and the river frozen solid.
‘What’s the difference between Siberia and Poland?’ his friend Benjamin had asked.
Leon had no answer.
‘There isn’t one, stupid,’ his friend had laughed.
In the wood yard the work would soon be ending for the day. These men were the real artists, the creators who never considered how good they were. He had listened to them once discussing the building of a new house that was going to be constructed down near the river. They talked it through stage by stage. They could see it all in their imaginations, what materials were needed, what tools would be used, how many men would be on the job, how long it would take and every other detail. Leon was in awe of what they could do. He knew there were doctors and lawyers and teachers and every other job in the town, but to him these were the men who deserved all the respect. They built the town and its bridges and its farms. They were the ones upon whom everybody depended.
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In the morning he was aware of two men approaching. They stopped in front of him but said nothing. He knew they were trying to decide what to do with him.
‘I’m hungry,’ he muttered.
There was no response to this as they turned back to join the others.
That day the group was joined by others including women and children. He leant himself up against a tree watching the Poles as they began to build their temporary camp. He tried to overcome the hunger by concentrating on what they were doing. All of them began digging shelters. Some used their bare hands, others branches and a few with tools they had brought, digging into the soft earth, cutting through the roots of the high trees. They spent all day digging. At times Leon was lost in confusion at what was happening as he was sucked into the pains of hunger and started remembering meals he had eaten, started fantasising about huge platefuls of his favourite dishes, smelling them, feeling them going in his mouth to be chewed and swallowed, huge mouthfuls to fill his straining stomach.
By evening the group was still working at their holes that would lead to deeper dugouts underground. A late summer breeze wafted the pine branches. His eyes were filled by their patterns across a faraway sunset that sent orange shafts of light between the trees. The light was fingers stroking across his consciousness, dancing between the shadows, playing across his senses that had become so aware of movement and smells in the air and low voices from the others until later he caught the first odours of the food they were sharing between each other.
His throat was too dry to swallow, but his nostrils took in the odour of apples, of old bread, of carrots and raw potatoes. He was desperate for anything they might have. With his fingers he scratched at the earth, pulling up thin roots to chew as he watched the group huddled together before the forest darkness set in leaving him to try again to sleep.
For a moment he thought he heard someone speaking but could not tell where the sound was coming from. It was already morning as he looked around to see a young boy run from one tree to another.
‘Please,’ Leon muttered.
The boy popped his head out and then back again.
‘Please,’ he repeated.
But there was no energy left as he closed his eyes listening to the sounds of the forest.
‘Are you a Jew?’
It was a child standing near him, a ten or eleven year old boy wrapped in a thick jacket that was many sizes too big.
Leon looked away as the boy started talking, his voice coming fast and breathless.
When he stopped he leant forward to touch Leon on the arm before running off.
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It was Benjamin who told him about the woman he had seen down at the river.
‘If you organise it so I can kiss your sister I’ll tell you about the woman I saw.’
‘You want to kiss Hella?’ had been Leon’s incredulous response, ‘Benjamin, you’re nine years old. Hella is twelve.’
‘And is changing fast, she’s getting bigger.’
‘My hell, you’re crazy.’
‘So I won’t tell you.’
‘It’ll be just another of your stories.’
‘You’ll never know. Anyway you’re only nine as well so stop sounding so superior.’
‘But I am. I’m going to be a famous artist.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me,’ Leon had laughed.
‘Just because you got a drawing set for your birthday.’
‘Hella would never in a million years want to kiss you.’
‘She was naked,’ Benjamin suddenly announced.
They were walking down Grinski Street that was busy with early evening horse and carts and workers coming home on their bicycles.
‘The woman by the river had not a stitch on. I saw her. I swear I did.’
‘Who was it?’ Leon needed to know.
‘I’ve never seen her before.’
‘And you saw......saw everything?’
They crossed the yard behind the printers’ workshop and then down an alleyway into the main square that was full of market stalls and busy with shoppers.
‘Ask me. Ask me anything you want
to prove I saw her.’ Benjamin called over the noise of the stallholders shouting out their prices.
‘I don’t know what to ask.’
The two boys passed between mounds of vegetables piled on the square’s cobblestones as women haggled over what everything cost.
‘Well then, the woman was by the river. I was by myself. I saw her from the wooden bridge. I noticed that....that the hair on her head was a different colour to the hair.....to the hair on her thing.’
Leon swallowed hard as he grabbed Benjamin’s arm.
‘What?’ was the only word he could manage.
His friend swung round to face him, ‘There. You see. I wouldn’t make something like that up. It’s all true. So I want a kiss off your sister. Do you hear?’
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Leon lay with his memories. He had no control over them. He was too exhausted and hungry to try. The forest seemed to shift around him like tall, thin figures stood waiting.
Again was the man with the axe and the way the headless body had been carried to where the trees were so close together they were in darkness.
Often Uncle David appeared, the one who he had always loved and admired, the one who understood why he wanted to draw. Not only did he own the carpentry business he ran the biggest tavern in Volnus, something that Leon’s mother and father always found awkward.
‘Death is such a crazy notion when I feel how good it is to be alive. And what do we Jews do? We bury as soon as we can, not giving the unlucky person a chance to change their mind.’
It was one of Uncle David’s jokes. Leon enjoyed his frequent visits to their house. He liked to watch him drink and smoke and slap his thigh when he laughed, which he did a lot when he was in the right mood.
‘And it can be anything, drinking this wine, sitting in this room, smoking my cigar or feel the spring sun shining through the window. It doesn’t take much, so long as you don’t take anything for granted. You realise then how lucky you are. That’s when life gets you. Oh yes. Then it’s good. And it’s absurd that all this stops and then there is just nothing. Because whatever the rabbis might say I know there is only a long sleep without dreams afterwards. We might be buried too quick to catch the train to heaven but unfortunately it doesn’t exist.’
His uncle would sometimes sit and let Leon draw him.
‘It’d better be good mind or we won’t be doing this again. I’m a busy man Leon. I have responsibilities. You know that. So you’d better do a good job.’
‘You know I like drawing you uncle. You have such a...such a...’
‘What?’
‘An interesting face.’
‘You mean old and ugly, that’s what you mean.’
‘So if that’s true why do you pin up some of my pictures behind the bar in your tavern?’
‘And how do you know they’re there?’
‘Somebody told me.’
‘A likely story, anyway Jews are not supposed to get involved in art. No images, remember. I’m sure that’s what old Moses had as one of the commandments. No images of God.’
Leon smiled then, ‘But you’re not God uncle.’
‘No I might be the devil instead. So hurry up and tell me when you’re finished.’
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He was dozing when he smelt the boy approach. He watched his small shadow stop a few feet away. Leon tried but could not manage to speak.
‘Alright?’ the boy said as a way of a greeting.
The drizzle had stopped and the pine smells were strong from the forest, that and the odour of the dark earth freshly moved.
‘Here,’ the boy tried again as he offered him a potato, ‘It’s not much.’
‘Thank you,’ Leon finally said as he started to chew on it, letting the moisture trickle down his throat.
‘Do Jews eat different?’ was the boy’s question.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because you’re only nibbling, if I get that hungry I stuff the lot down as fast as I can.’
It made Leon more aware of eating the potato as slowly as possible, putting all his effort into being conscious of the process, biting a piece, holding it between his teeth, then rolling it around his mouth before he began chewing it until there was just a tiny amount to swallow.
‘My name is Leon,’ he said then.
The boy pulled a face, ‘I never asked.’
‘I know, but I’m telling. So who are you?’
‘I’m Kas. That’s what everybody calls me.’
‘Glad to meet you Kas.’
Leon offered a filthy hand that the boy ignored.
‘I’ve been told not to speak to you.’
Leon nodded, ‘Well you shouldn’t be here then. I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
‘Sounds daft that.’
‘I suppose it does, things being as they are.’
Kas was squatting with is hands on his knees watching Leon.
‘Some say I’m small for my age. I don’t like fighting, but if you don’t fight everybody will think you’re soft.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re a Jew, right?’
‘I’m a Jew from Volnus.’
‘That’s near where I lived but I’ve never seen you before.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘They say that all Jews are stinking rich.’
‘And that’s not true. It’s just gossip. My father is a school teacher. We don’t have that much money.’
Kas was silent, looking around.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Leon.
‘They say they’re all dead, all the Jews. The Germans shot them all. That’s what they say.’
Leon tried hopelessly to blank out what the boy was saying.
‘I...I don’t think about it.’
Kas picked up a small stick and started poking into the earth.
‘I hate the Krauts. What did we ever do to them? They’re just bastards. Anyway I’d better be going. My mother said I wasn’t supposed to talk to you. Nobody is supposed to talk to you. But I think that’s a shame like. Things are bad enough as it is. Who wants to live in a hole in the forest because I don’t, but at the moment that’s the only idea there is. Big Paul, he’s the one who had the idea. Not that he’s the leader of us lot or anything because we don’t have one, not a proper one. My father wouldn’t be any good. He never has any ideas. If anybody asks tell them you were talking to yourself, alright?’ were the last words before the small shadow of Kas stretched and turned away.
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Uncle David was always arguing with his brother. If it was about politics then Leon’s father rose to the bait. Often Leon felt sorry for him when he started losing his temper, which he usually did when David started making his exaggerated comments.
In the winter uncle would come round two or three times a week, just before dinner was served. Leon’s mother always left a place for him. He was the constant visitor.
‘When you have money it makes more. The more you have the more it makes.’
David knew his brother believed in the Bund. It was his strongest opinion, that the Jews had to organise themselves under socialist principles. It was the only way forward as far as he was concerned, which was in direct conflict with the capitalist ideas of his brother, the business man, the one who owned one of the only cars in Volnus and smoked cigars and liked to play cards with some of his rich associates.
His father’s love for Leon was a very quiet affair. There was no physical contact, no kisses or hugs when he had been younger, no stories at bed time, only a careful distance between them. But Leon knew he was deeply loved by his father. It might be a smile, a look that lasted longer than it should. For Leon these were not clues. They were examples of his father’s love.
‘Do you teach them the truth?’ David would ask about his brother’s profession.
She was stout and round cheeked, with dark eyes that looked often surprised. Of all the family she had the best sense of humour and loved to invite her friends for a good afternoon gossip. As a child Leon had loved to sit on the carpet colouring in some picture book listening to what the women had to say. It was the most secure feeling, surrounded by their voices and warmth and the smell of his mother’s baking. He would hear the latest tales. He would watch the different ways the women had of eating his mother’s currant buns. They were huge and golden and fluffy and would fall in pieces if you didn’t manage them properly.
‘Why do you do this?’ father would ask when things had gone too far between him and his brother.
David would pull a face of astonishment, realising his dinner might be at stake if he pushed it any further.
‘Jonathon. I’m innocent. Ask Miriam, ask Hella. I mean no harm. All I say is that through the centuries Poland has hardly existed. It’s hard to be patriotic about a country that has had so little history.’
‘And you know that’s nonsense.’
‘Come and eat,’ would be mother’s interruption, words that always stirred Leon’s sister.
Hella liked her food. She would be always first to the table and the last to leave. She managed portions that were as large as her uncle’s.
‘Why don’t you draw me?’ she often asked her brother.
‘Because you won’t sit still, you’re always wriggling about,’ Leon would tell her.
After the meal they would sit by the fire, David in his usual chair with his waistcoat unbuttoned. He always brought two bottles of wine with him from the tavern, one for himself, the other for rest of the family. Hella and mother would go to the kitchen to prepare the coffee. Leon’s father would pretend to read the paper while David would ask his nephew about school.
‘Is Levin as strict as they say he is?’
‘Worse uncle, he has every pupil petrified, including me. He has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen and can smack two heads together if somebody’s not listening.’