Run, Boy, Run Page 2

  "Try to think," Yankel said. "If you can remember where your house is, we'll find your mother for you."

  "Where is your mother?" Srulik asked.

  "She's dead. My father died too, in Warsaw."

  Srulik stretched out on his mattress. He wasn't used to sleeping by himself. He would have given anything to be in one bed again with his brother Duvid, who always kicked him and pulled the blanket. He could picture their building clearly: the entrance, the rickety wooden stairs, the door of their apartment, which was never shut during the day because of all the people coming in and out. He just couldn't remember how to get there, even though he could see his mother as though she were in front of his eyes. It was weird how someone could be so close and yet so out of reach.

  Before he knew it, it was morning.

  ***

  The biggest boys went out to sell the vodka and cigarettes and bought bread and sugar with the money. Srulik took a piece of bread, wet it, and dipped it in the sugar. The bread wasn't sliced as neatly as his mother's, but it tasted the same.

  The boys brought him to their friend, Yoyneh the shoemaker, who sometimes made them tea in exchange for sugar. He was working in the doorway of the little cubbyhole that was his shoe shop.

  "We have a new gang member," Yankel said, introducing Srulik.

  Yoyneh glanced up at him. Srulik smiled. The shoemaker reached out a callused hand and gently took Srulik's chin.

  "God has given you what not many people have, son," he said, looking first at Srulik's face and then at his shoes. "I'm too busy today, but come another time and I'll mend your shoes for you."

  "He has a mother," Yankel said. "He just doesn't know where she lives."

  Yoyneh frowned. Telling Srulik to sit, he asked him what his street looked like.

  "Like a street," Srulik said.

  "Do you remember the number of the house?"

  "Yes. Ten."

  "And the name of the street?"

  "No."

  "Look at that." Yoyneh pointed at a street sign. "Did you have one on your street?"

  Srulik looked at the sign and shook his head in sorrow. He couldn't remember.

  "I'll go to the police," Yoyneh said. "Maybe someone reported you missing. And you," he told Yankel, "should take him around the ghetto. Maybe you'll hit the right street by chance."

  They finished their tea. Yankel took Srulik and they crisscrossed back and forth through the crowded streets of the ghetto. "Maybe it's this street?" Yankel asked at each corner.

  "No," Srulik answered each time.

  In the end they gave up and rejoined the gang.

  ***

  Srulik was getting used to the new way of life—sleeping in lofts, roaming the streets, shoplifting by day, and breaking into stores before the curfew. The boys kept up their soccer games near the garbage bins where Srulik lost his mother. Each time they returned there, Srulik looked to see whether his mother was waiting for him.

  Yoyneh kept his promise and went to the Jewish ghetto police, but no child had been reported missing. There was just a long list of nameless children who had died in the streets and were known only by the addresses of the houses by which they were found.

  Whenever their rovings brought them to a new part of the ghetto, Yankel asked, "Srulik, was it near here?"

  Srulik would look hard at his surroundings. He never recognized them. If he had stayed with Yankel's gang long enough, he might have found his house in the end. But one day there were shouts in the streets, accompanied by the harsh whistles of the ghetto police.

  "A roundup!"

  This was something new. The shouts came from men and women running from the police. They wanted to warn others. The street emptied at once.

  Yankel led the gang through some backyards to another street.

  "Let's ask Yoyneh," he said. "Maybe he knows what it's about."

  Yoyneh was mending a shoe stretched upside-down on a shoehorn.

  "Everyone's shouting 'roundup,'" Yankel told him.

  Yoyneh nodded sadly. "The Jewish police," he said, "are rounding up Jews for the Germans and putting them on trains. It looks like they're planning to empty the ghetto."

  "Trains for where?"

  "Resettlement."

  "Where?"

  Yoyneh pointed with a finger at the sky and moved his shoemaker's stool into his cubbyhole. "I'm closing," he said. "I have a wife and children to worry about. You boys should get out of the ghetto."

  "Where to?"

  "The Polish side."

  "I was already there," Srulik said. "The Germans caught us."

  "Get out," Yoyneh repeated. He locked the door, glanced at the keys in his hand, put them in his pocket, and went off.

  The boys sat on the sidewalk, talking things over.

  "There's a gate to the ghetto that always has wagons by it," Yankel said. "They come to haul away the garbage. Maybe we can hide in them."

  He led them to the gate. They followed him somberly, stopping to survey it from afar. There were two German soldiers armed with rifles and four policemen—two Poles on the Polish side and two Jews on the Jewish side. The wagons, hitched to horses, stood inside the gate.

  "The first to make it through," Yankel said, "gets out at the first corner and waits for the rest of us. If there are more than two of you, you'll have to hide."

  "For how long?"

  "For as long as it takes for all of us to cross. If we don't all make it, go without us."

  "Where?"

  "Search me."

  They split up. Srulik inched toward the wagons, which stood parked in a row inside the gate. One began to move. He jumped onto the back and burrowed into the pile of garbage. The smell didn't bother him. The farmer whose wagon it was heard the sound and turned around. For a second, as Srulik disappeared, their eyes met. The farmer hesitated. Then Srulik heard the crack of his whip and the cry:

  "Giddy-up!"

  The wagon lurched over some cobblestones and stopped. There were Polish and German voices, and then they set out again. Then a German shouted behind them:

  "Halt!"

  The wagon came to a stop. A soldier ran toward it on studded boots. He made a German remark and Srulik felt something cold slide past his right leg, rip his pants, and slice into the heap of garbage. It withdrew and plunged back two more hair-raising times, once close to his head.

  "Get a move on!" the German said in Polish. "There's no boy in there."

  The wagon set out again. The rattle of the wheels and the clip-clop of the horse's hooves made Srulik feel hopeful. But now came more shouts—this time far away. The wagon stopped once more. Srulik raised himself and peered out from the rear. The German soldier and a Polish policeman were running toward them, shouting and waving their hands. The farmer leaned back, yanked the frightened boy from his place, and set him down on the road. Srulik's first instinct was to run. The farmer said, "Don't move, boy. I'll get you out of here."

  The policeman and the soldier were coming closer. Srulik froze. A shiver ran through him. The farmer bent over the horse with a knife and cut the harness strap. He swung Srulik onto the horse and mounted behind him, and they galloped off. Two shots rang out. Srulik tried turning around to look, but the farmer gripped him tightly. When he finally caught a glimpse over his shoulder, the gate of the ghetto had vanished, as had the soldier, the policeman, and the wagon.

  After a while the horse slowed to a trot. The farmer relaxed his grip, and Srulik breathed a sigh of relief. It was the first horse he had ever ridden in his life.

  They left the city behind them. Before long they were riding through fields with woods on either side. Now and then they passed a solitary cottage. After a while they came to a village of thatch-roofed houses. Each house had a vegetable garden with some fruit trees and small buildings around it. Srulik saw horses, cows, pigs, and chickens in the farmyards. Wash hung from laundry lines, and here and there an empty pot was drying upside-down on a fence post.

  They rode through the vill
age. A barking dog chased them. A woman sitting in her doorway with a child watched them go by. Boys played soccer on the road. The farmer reined the horse to a walk to keep it from kicking up dust at them. He didn't speak. Neither did Srulik. They left the village. Another village appeared on the horizon, and the farmer stopped and pointed. Srulik looked and saw several boys dressed in rags by a stream that sparkled in the sunlight. The boys noticed them and dived into the reeds along the bank.

  "Those are Jewish children," the farmer said. "Go to them."

  He dismounted and helped Srulik down, then took two cubes of sugar and a piece of bread from his pocket. He gave Srulik one cube and the bread and fed the other cube to the horse, patting its neck fondly. Putting his hand on Srulik's head, he made the sign of the cross over him and said, "May the Mother of God look after you."

  He mounted his horse and rode off. Srulik watched him go. He wanted to wave goodbye, but the farmer didn't turn around. Should he eat the bread and sugar together, or first one and then the other? He decided to eat the bread first. He chewed it as he watched the farmer grow smaller in the distance and vanish around a bend in the road. Then he ate the sugar.

  3. The Forest Protects Us

  Srulik cut across the field and went to look for the boys who had hidden by the stream bank. Although from the horse he had seen the spot clearly, he now he had to guess where it was. Soon, he found it. The boys were sitting by the water, having an argument. They fell silent when they saw him. After a while one of them said, "That's the redhead we saw on the farmer's horse."

  "Was that you?" a boy asked.

  Srulik nodded.

  "Where are you from?"

  "The Warsaw ghetto," he said.

  "When did you leave it?"

  "Today."

  "What were you doing on that horse?"

  Srulik shrugged.

  "You don't know?" The question was accompanied by an incredulous laugh.

  "No."

  "What happened to its wagon?" someone asked. "It was dragging its harness."

  Srulik told them what happened and showed them his ripped pants. He also, he now discovered, had a bloody cut on his foot.

  "You're lucky. That German had a bayonet."

  "Do you have anything to eat?" Srulik asked.

  A boy took some farmer's cheese from his pocket. Srulik broke off a piece, ate it, and licked his fingers.

  "Where did you get this cheese from?" he asked.

  "The Poles hang it in bags from their fences to dry. It's easy to steal it," the boy said.

  There was a consultation.

  "What should we do with him?"

  "One little brat is enough."

  "Don't you even care about him, Shleymi?" asked a small boy who was sharpening a pocket knife on a stone.

  "You keep out of this, Yosele," Shleymi said. "Be happy we agreed to take you."

  Apart from the boy with the knife, everyone was older than Srulik.

  "Let Avrum decide," the boy with the cheese declared.

  Everyone looked at Avrum.

  "We'll take him," he said.

  "If he does something dumb that gets us caught, you're to blame," Shleymi told him.

  The boy with the cheese said, "Once we're caught, who cares who's to blame?"

  His name was Itsik. He sat by the stream, throwing sticks into the water and watching them float away on the current. Srulik lay on his back and gazed at the sky. He kept picturing the farmer and his horse growing smaller in the distance. His thoughts were full of the day's events.

  Someone was waking him.

  "Come on, we're moving out."

  It was little Yosele. He was barefoot and wearing a grown man's clothes with the pants hitched up to his waist and tied with a rope. Srulik saw that he was the only boy with shoes. They didn't look like they would last long, because Yoyneh had never managed to mend them.

  The boys set out on a path that led through some fields toward a far-off village. When they neared it, they took cover in a wheat field. Some people and animals were visible in the nearest farmyard. The sun was setting. A mare stood tethered by a stable, its little foal scampering around it. A girl was coming home with a flock of geese. A dog barked a greeting and the geese crooked their necks at it with fearsome shrieks. A teenage boy led some cows to a barn. A woman stepped out of a house and shouted at him:

  "Yacek, get those pigs into the sty!"

  Wasn't that the Polish name that was supposed to appear on the postcard his parents had planned to send to his brothers and sister?

  The woman, her sleeves rolled up, went to the barn. She held a milk can in one hand and a milking stool in the other. Avrum studied the farmyard.

  "They've prepared baskets of vegetables to take to the market tomorrow," he whispered.

  What happened next was unexpected. The farmer strode out of the house, saddled the mare, and rode off. The little foal ran after them. The dog jumped to its feet and went with them. The boys excitedly watched them go. Then Avrum said, "Now!"

  They jumped from their hiding places and ran to the farmyard. The large baskets of vegetables were standing by a wall, next to a smaller basket of eggs. Avrum grabbed the eggs while the others snatched cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and radishes and stuffed pockets and bags of cheesecloth with them. The geese shrieked. The boys took off at a run. The teenage boy looked out from the pigsty to see what was happening and yelled, "Yids! Thieves! Mama!"

  His mother stepped out of the barn.

  "The eggs!" the Polish boy yelled.

  They all ran as fast as they could, with Avrum and Shleymi taking the lead. The Polish boy gave chase and caught up with a straggler who had started to run a moment too late. He tackled him and pinned him to the ground. The boy screamed and cried. The woman went on chasing the rest of them, falling farther and farther behind until she gave up.

  They stopped to catch their breath, grinning as they inspected the vegetables. Their mouths watered when they saw the eggs in Avrum's basket. No one mentioned the boy who was caught.

  "In the city we only stole when it was dark," Srulik said.

  "You can't steal in the dark from the fields," Itsik explained. "You have to see what you're picking."

  "And if you're looking for something to wear," Yosele added, "you have to see what's hanging on the clothesline."

  Now Srulik understood where Yosele's clothes came from.

  "This isn't the city," said Shleymi. "Everything is different here. You have to be careful not to do anything dumb."

  "Like what?" Srulik asked.

  "Like talking to Poles. Or swimming naked in the river. You mustn't ever take off your pants."

  Srulik had never heard of such a rule. But although he couldn't think of the reason for it, he didn't want to ask Shleymi.

  They passed a farm. Some pear trees stood in front of the farmhouse. "They're real pears," Itsik said of the fruit. "Not like the little sour ones you sometimes see by the road."

  They crept up stealthily. There was no barking.

  "There's no dog."

  "Let Srulik pick some pears," Shleymi said.

  "Why Srulik?" Avrum asked.

  "Why not? It's time he did something."

  "Can you climb a tree?" Avrum asked.

  "Of course."

  Itsik gave Srulik a small bag. The boys watched him tensely. In Blonie, Srulik had climbed trees all the time. He scrambled up a fence and shinnied into a tree. But the dog had only been asleep. Now it woke behind the house and began to bark. An old farmer stepped outside and saw Srulik in the tree. Srulik jumped back over the fence and ran. The farmer freed the dog and they ran after him.

  "Stop, thief!" the farmer shouted.

  The boys lit out before Srulik reached them. Although he could easily outrun the farmer, the dog was catching up. He stopped short, took a pear from the bag, and flung it at it as hard as he could. It hit its target and the dog howled and stopped, too. But it didn't stop barking, and Srulik didn't know what to do. If he st
arted to run again, so would the dog, and if he didn't, the farmer would soon be there. Avrum, seeing his predicament, turned back to lend a hand. Shleymi grabbed him.

  "Don't! The farmer will catch you both."

  "Let go of me," Avrum growled and broke loose.

  He ran back and hit the dog with a stick. The dog lunged at him. But Avrum had been in fights with village dogs before. He whacked it on the snout and it ran off with its tail between its legs before the farmer could reach them.

  Srulik couldn't stop thinking about the boy who had been caught.

  ***

  The boys came to a broad meadow and walked through the grass. Cows and horses were grazing in it. Three other boys were sitting by a fire. Avrum halted. He gave Yosele two small coins and said, "Go ask if they'll sell us some matches."

  Srulik went with him.

  "Do you have any matches?" they asked.

  The Polish boys shook their heads.

  "We'll pay you for them," Yosele said.

  "Then I reckon we've got some," said a boy.

  Yosele examined the box of matches he was given. It wasn't full. The boy filled it from a second box, and Yosele handed him the coins. Colored bottles were lying by the fire. Some were broken, and others were neatly sliced in half.

  "Are you making glasses from those bottles?" Srulik asked.

  "What's it to you?"

  Yosele leaned down and took two broken bits of bottle.

  "You have to pay for that too."

  "Try to make me," Yosele said.

  The Polish boys said nothing. From time to time they cast suspicious glances at the bigger boys standing on the path.

  "Let's go," Yosele said.

  He gave the matches to Avrum and they continued on their way. Yosele and Srulik brought up the rear.

  "How come Avrum sent us to buy the matches?" Srulik wanted to know.

  "We're too small to scare the Polish kids."

  "But why did you take those broken bottles?"

  "They're for you." Yosele handed him the two pieces of glass.

  Srulik didn't get it.

  "They're in place of a knife."