by Gary Barwin
Finally, Motl indicated what was left of the foam and asked Esther, “What do you see? Ocean foam? A glacier? Spit? The future?”
“The soft bed upstairs. The feathers, the eiderdown. I’m exhausted.”
Three men entered the tavern just then, japing and kibitzing. They settled at a corner table and one drew a deck of cards from his coat and slapped it down. They looked to the bartender with expectant hangdog, beer-ready faces. What a world, the least there can be is drink.
“I’m ready for shut-eye in our foamy bed,” Esther said. “Let’s not wait for the future. It’s just upstairs.” She laid her hand on Motl’s, but Motl was a small boy beguiled by the corner table. One of the men ostentatiously accordioned the cards into the air and let them drop back into a pile. Another then took the deck, split the cards and shuffled them with a single hand. The third lifted the tall mug that the barkeep’s wife had set on the table and, tipping his head toward the beamed ceiling, finished the beer in one glorious gulp. He exhaled with triumphant satisfaction and the three laughed together.
“Go,” Esther said. “Just don’t gamble both your livers. Because one’s mine.”
As she climbed the stairs, Motl rose and, transfixed, floated toward the men. “Czerwony król,” they said, indicating the open playing field of the table. “Red King.”
He took a chair. The barkeep’s wife, whose name he learned was Grażyna, brought him a beer, and the game began. He held his hand tightly fanned, close before his eyes, peering appraisingly at the other three over the cards. This was Slavic hold’em and Motl was ready to pony up what was required, ready to “steal the blinds” or “suck out on the river” as seasoned poker players did. The only ace in his sleeve was a cool hand. He was a Litvak stranger come into this burg, ready for soft townsfolk, a night of gambling, and then, come what may, he’d stride out of town on his own two feet, fists like Talmudic hams, and into the future.
One of his new friends, Mikolaj, deals them each two cards face down.
Frančišek puts down the small blind: two coins. Aleksander, on his left, places the big blind: four coins.
Motl, who has only a few remaining coins from the Ḥakhan, calls the big blind. Frančišek raises. Aleksander calls.
Mikolaj burns a card, flops three cards.
Motl sucks a gulp of suds. Frančišek raises the left corner of his soft mouth, the left of his eyebrow.
“Hmm,” Mikolaj says.
Motl swigs another brew.
Call. Raise. Call.
Button burns a card. Reveals a turn card.
Call. Check. Raise.
Dealer burns a card. Adds the river to the community.
Call. Call. Call.
Showdown. Reveal.
Last raiser shows first. Aleksander.
Motl’s shirt is lost. Tall glasses of Pilsner.
Again.
Two coins down on the first hand.
Frančišek on his left meets. Aleksander raises. Mikolaj folds.
Further suds into Motl. Where’s his hoss? Right. Tied outside. Esther asleep. Another round.
Beer. Cards. The Poles click coins on the table. Again.
Motl empties another stein. He’s plastered. Fully shickered.
He calls. Raises. Is on the button. Now the big blind. No more coins. What to put into the pot? What does he have of value? He gulps more malt. Mikolaj has a watch. “A farm goose,” Aleksander says. “I can be trusted, ask my friends, not my wife.” Frančišek has a gold chain. Motl?
“I can’t stop now—not with this hand—but I have nothing left.”
“Nothing? What’s in that satchel?” Aleksander asks. “You keep it so close, it must be something valuable.”
“The most valuable.”
“So use it.”
“It’s too important. And what would you want with papers, anyway?”
“We’re gambling here. If they’re valuable to you, we’ll accept them. Frančišek? Mikolaj?”
“We agree,” Frančišek says, and Mikolaj nods to confirm. “Put them into the pot.”
His Karaite papers? He’s definitely going to win. Besides, they’re of no use to them, he thinks. They won’t actually keep them.
So into the pot.
Call. Raise. Check. Fold. Frančišek wins Motl’s papers. Also a goose.
“For what can I sell these? How many kopeks when I go into market?” Frančišek asks. “Ach. I’ll figure it out tomorrow. When I’m sober…Another round!”
Motl drains another stein, sings with the Poles.
I’m old and fat
I’ll die soon, I fear
But Jesus, send me
where saints drink beer.
He woke on the floor beside the bed where Esther was sleeping. He’d staggered into the correct room, the only one upstairs, considered that act of orienteering a feat of extraordinary wayfinding, and, having achieved that success, pulled a yard of floor up beneath him, made a bed of nothing and so discovered sleep.
* * *
—
You wake and find you have no teeth. It was a night of splendid gnashing and unrecallable gnawing. Who did you bite? And where? Have they slung a leg over, ridden a pony to the next town, your teeth in their haunches? Despite his mouth tasting like a goulash of rats, Motl did have his pearly whites when he woke, but he was not the Karaite he once was, nor with the ability to prove it. What now?
“Frančišek, Frančišek,” he roared. “I am sober now. Without papers, I’m not Karaite but a dead man. Save me and we’ll find you some cash. Or we’ll try your back window and repatriate what we need.”
Esther turned and, half-awake, murmured, “Motl?”
Hard to maintain an illusion of aplomb when one is speaking from the floor.
“Esther,” he said. “I lost something last evening that I must get back.”
“Your dignity?”
“I reckon that was left in the Alps, years ago.”
“Surely you didn’t wager the car?”
“If only they’d thought of it. Or I had.”
He confessed the whole sorry story, and between them they decided they had no choice but to find Frančišek’s farmhouse and retrieve Motl’s papers.
“And,” Motl said, “take a gander…”
“I know,” Esther said. “For the goose.”
* * *
—
Breakfast was eggs, bacon, buttered bread.
“What’s the Karaite bracha for bacon?” Esther whispered.
“I just cross myself: Nose. Toes. Rump and snout.”
They settled with Karol, the barkeep—“Go, go, you owe me nothing. I don’t know your story, but I know you are escaping. This is a small thing we can do to help. Besides, after last night, I know you have nothing.”
They asked the whereabouts of Frančišek. The barn over the bridge, just before the forest. There was a painted blue chest at the end of the drive. Frančišek sold eggs from its drawers.
They found the place, just where Karol said it would be, but when they got there, the house and the barn were both on fire and the animals set loose. A pig in the road, shot through the side. Red wound on pink skin. The family, too, gunned down.
A retelling of these years too often unfolds like a Wunderkammer of tragedies, each set on a mahogany shelf behind glass, something to marvel at, to observe with prurient fascination, but not to grieve. The past: it’s always here, just distributed unevenly, like pox on a chicken, or money. Inside some of us the past is radiant like the sacred heart, inside others it’s a tumour lurking in hidden dark. But still, we tell the tale, backwards and forwards, waves pulling toward shore, or away.
They turned, drove quickly back to the tavern. Grażyna was at the door, red face wet with tears. “Aleksander just left. He told me the Nazis came before the su
n was up. They thought Frančišek was hiding a family of Jews. It wasn’t true. He would not take such a chance. He had family.” She covered her face in a handkerchief, weeping. She handed Motl some papers. “For you.”
His Karaite identification.
“Frančišek left these before he went home last night. He said he knew most of the Germans in Poland don’t bother with papers. They shoot and, because they’ve shot, you must be someone who deserves to be shot. It’s logic. He says even if you are Karaites, you’re not safe. But, still better to have the papers…you need every chance you can get. As they say, ‘If you’re running from a bear, best to have both shoes.’
“Last night, Frančišek told me one more thing: you could have the papers, but you cannot have goose.”
6
“Frančišek, may his memory be a blessing,” Esther said as they drove quickly away.
“It is for us,” Motl said, placing a finger on the papers in his jacket.
“And the memory of his family.”
“I thought him simple as a plough, guileless as ducks. I did not expect such kindness.”
“But, just in case, maybe next time gamble your liver instead. Or at least don’t drown it, then you won’t undertake such wagers.”
Piertanie was only a few shanties at a crossroads, so close together if a dog in one house licked its scroggs, a dog in another would taste them. It was the woods around the town they were headed for. They hoped to find the American Pole that the partisan Mordecai had told them about.
* * *
—
He was in hiding in a shack hidden deep in the trees, the ZWZ—the Union of Armed Struggle—publications hidden with him, likely providing effective insulation against cold and bullets.
Motl slipped out of the car and rolled away a large boulder blocking a path that led into the woods. Esther manoeuvred past while Motl tipped the stone back into place. He kicked up the pine needles to make the road seem less travelled—a path less trodden makes all the difference when Nazis are sniffing about—and joined Esther as she emerged from covering the car in pine branches.
Together they would seek the hideout of this outlaw. They had no plan but walked along a stream until they arrived at churning rapids, then headed west.
Mid-morning, the forest was still, few birds called, there was no wind.
Grażyna had packed them some apples and when Motl bit into one, the chomp reverberated through the silent trees.
A human disturbing our intimate quiet. A settler eating our compatriot.
There was a rustling. “Shh,” Esther whispered, pointing to a gap in the trees. Something moved. There were structures there, tents of some kind, the honey-mustard colour of hide.
“Teepees?” Motl said. Then stopped. “Teepees.”
What is the word for when what is inside definitively aligns with what is outside? For Motl it was a mixture of hope, sadness and disbelief.
Three Indianers strode toward them, their bows drawn but pointed at the ground. One was warrior tall, a red broom-brush of hair arcing over his pale shaven head. Another was older, a chief in a splendid headdress of red-tipped white feathers, the impressive rays of an avian sun. Both were shirtless, their chests the colour of perogies. The third man sported striking coal-black braids that hung down over a tan jacket decorated with fringe and bone.
They stopped in front of Esther and Motl, and the chief raised his hand, palm toward them.
“Howgh!”
Motl hesitated, then raised his own hand. “Howgh. Dzień dobry. Good morning.”
“Dzień dobry. Good morning,” the three Indianers said. They could speak Polish.
Should they trust these Indianers? Himmler had designated many groups as Ehrenarier—honorary Aryans—and was considering turning Indianers into Aryans too. Hitler had said that he would give them their land back when the Reich came to North America. But surely the Indianers would stand with Jews and others who had been persecuted and dispossessed. It was an ethical syllogism war would put to the test:
True strength is to fight for the weak.
Sometimes survival means siding with the strong.
Therefore the solution is…to hide.
“We welcome you onto our land,” the Indianer with the braids said. “I am Raven Wing.”
What would Motl’s Indianer name be? Schnitzel Owl? Wrinklepurse? Son without Mother? Stoneless One?
“We are Karaites,” Esther said. “Yochanan Firrouz and Sima Babovich.”
“Lakota,” Raven Wing said, indicating himself and his Indianer brothers. “This forest is our home. We live here with our wives and children, with our old men and women, our animals and our traditional knowledge.”
He and his companions led them toward many teepees that circled a central fire, around which several women and men sat cross-legged, scraping hides, eating, smoking pipes. Their voices were a soothing susurration mixed with the crackling of flames and quiet laughter.
When one is on the land, one should speak the language of the land, the language of those who live with and know the land, its green words, the words of its wind, its trees, its animals and spirits, the green language born when the green land itself was born, the language learned from the land.
And if one hasn’t learned this language, then one should speak Polish. It’s what all these Indianers were doing. They were speaking Polish. Their actual indigenous language.
Raven Wing motioned to Esther and Motl, indicating they should take a seat in the circle. They were offered wooden plates heaped with bannock and a pemmican-like jerky of dried fruit and suet. And ham on a kaiser. And beer.
A rattling behind one of the teepees. A man in a vigorous green robe covered in bright metal discs emerged, shaking and wailing, gyrating in the direction of the fire. Several men pounded sticks on a tipped-over marching band drum covered in deer hide and ululated intently. The man continued his trembling and tintinnabulation as he entered the circle, his feet performing an obscure scuttling, a clog dance with moccasins.
“Some countries—Czechoslovakia, for example—do not allow men to dance this way for it is tradition that the jingle dress dance is only permitted to women,” Raven Wing explained. “But this warrior consulted an elder and was told to dance what was in his heart. I suppose he is jingly inside and so this is how he dances.”
The older man in the feathered headdress stood up. “Chief Eagle Feather will now tell how he killed a bear with his bare hands and a gun,” he announced.
“I was a young man then and my chest was broad as an eagle’s. It was night and the owls with their eyes like moons swept their wings over the grasses. I was alone—my father had been shot and my brothers taken to school far away. I was determined to be brave as I stayed in the forest, with only my gun and memories of Karl May stories of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand for company.
“What sound does a bear make padding through the forest searching for midnight blueberries and gathering salmon from the river? I fired at the branches, at leaves, at mice, at the hooting of owls, at the wind, the dark, the beating of my heart and my own fear. By the time the moon began to rise, I had only a few bullets left. I remembered the words of Intschu-tschuna, Winnetou’s father, when he said that without fear an Apache knight cannot be brave.”
“For me it’s more ‘without a gun I cannot be brave,’ ” Motl whispered to Esther.
Chief Eagle Feather continued. “I waited by the river until the bloom of dawn began to suffuse the sky. Then I heard a sound across the water—a deer between trees, questioning me. Could I be a man? I stood and raised my gun. The deer was in my sights, then from behind me a bear stuck its snoot into my bag of food. I turned and fired. The bear fell. I wrapped my hands around its stump-thick neck. I looked into its eyes. There was understanding between us. As you see, I still wear its claws as a sign of this around my neck.”
&
nbsp; The other Indianers nodded and clapped, so Esther and Motl nodded and clapped also. The man in the fringed coat moved to sit beside them.
“Hitler doesn’t know we’re on this land,” he said. “If he knew, he’d march us out. Put us in a camp. Starve us. Shoot us. He only says he’d give America back to the Indianers, he doesn’t mean it. But we’re ready for a Little Bighorn/Battle of the Greasy Grass rather than Wounded Knee—a war we’d win. ‘Honorary Aryan’? I don’t want to belong to a club that wouldn’t have me as a member.
“But where are you from? What are you doing here? You didn’t just climb in a boat and bump into our land accidentally. We’ll only believe that story once.”
“We are Karaites,” Motl said. “People originally from Judea and then Crimea, but we ourselves, Sima and I, have travelled far. From Trakai. From Vilnius. We’re looking for a man named Piotr who lives among these trees.”
“Piotr? We do not know this Piotr. However, lately a North American named Mike has come to live among us. Today he is not with us, as he lies sick in his cabin.”
“Mike? Perhaps he is our Piotr by another name,” Esther said to Motl. “How many can be living in these woods?”
“Besides, what would an American be doing here—hiding in Plains’ site?”
A pig roasted on a spit. Further dances, speeches, stories and songs until night fell. Then, Raven Wing led Motl and Esther to Mike’s cabin on the edge of the encampment. He had been laid out sick all day.
“Perhaps it was my kielbasa,” Raven Wing said. “My father made it. Months ago.”
“An anthropologist eats everything,” Mike explained when he opened the door. “You can’t learn without eating.” He closed the door, vivid blue eyes sparkling as he smiled. “I told them I was too sick to attend the circle today,” he said. “Sometimes my subjects’ hospitality is overwhelming. Tea?” He made a place for them around the barrow of books filling his table.
A researcher from the University of Toronto, he’d been stranded in Poland because of the war. “I’m an Oneida of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy,” Mike said. “Doing a dissertation on Polish Indianers. Why? Back home they prefer white people to write about the Indigenous. You know—experts. I mean, what would we Oneida know? Besides, it makes for more palatable results. Here, they don’t know I’m Native,” he said. “Blue eyes, blue jeans, white shirt. No feathers or fringes.”