Milkweed

  “They won’t get him,” Uri said.

  As the streetcar rattled on down the tracks, I saw someone swing a leg out and kick, and then Kuba was popping from the crowd and racing across the street, and the people hurled curses and laughter after him.

  Uri shook his head grimly. “Stupid. Stupid. They take everything. Just to take it.” He looked at me as the streetcar clanged above us. “Take only what you need. You hear?” He pinched my nose until my eyes watered.

  I howled. “Yes!”

  For a minute the passengers had forgotten us as they stared at the excitement on the sidewalk. Now they remembered us. A man in a silver necktie snarled, “Go. Get off.” A little boy stuck out his tongue. And then a woman in a fox fur came down the aisle and reached over the seats and drew down the window on Uri’s hands. I screamed, but Uri didn’t. The fox’s eyes were like little black marbles. The lady reached over to bring down my window too, but she stopped because there was a loud sound, and it wasn’t the clang of the streetcar. It was sirens. Ahead of us a shop exploded in a gush of flame.

  People screamed. The streetcar gasped and jerked to a halt. Within moments it was empty. Even the driver was gone, running with the crowds in the street.

  And then the streets were empty. A strange music filled the air: the sirens’ wail and the thump of exploding shells.

  I pulled myself up into the streetcar. I opened the window that clamped Uri’s fingers. He fell to the ground and in a moment appeared at the door. He threw his hands in the air and cheered, “Finally!”

  I thought he was celebrating the release of his fingers, but it was something else. “I always wanted to drive one of these.” He sat in the driver’s seat. He stared at the controls. He pushed one thing, pulled another; the streetcar jerked into movement and we were heading down the tracks.

  What a ride! Uri turned the steering stick this way and that. He learned how to make it go faster, then faster, and the streetcar screamed along with us through the deserted city. Smoke rose beyond the rooftops, as if giants were puffing cigars. He showed me where to pull the clanger, and I pulled and pulled and the clanging joined the music of the bombardment.

  At last we came to a loop, where the streetcar was meant to turn around, but Uri did not slow down, and the streetcar leaped from the tracks, and it was like riding a house into other houses. We smashed into a restaurant, plowed through a field of red tablecloths into the kitchen with an ear-ripping clatter, and still there were no people and no one to yell, “Stop! Stop!” Sauerkraut splattered across the windshield as we came to a halt against the ovens. By now the streetcar was on its side and we were hanging from our places. Uri was howling like a wolf, and even as the oven chimney pipes toppled like trees, I laughed and pulled and pulled the clanger rope.

  5

  AUTUMN

  Soon the airplanes came, adding their waspy buzz to the music. I wanted to see them, but Uri would not let me go outside.

  “Why can’t we go out?” I said.

  “They’re dropping bombs,” he said.

  I thought: This is what the enemy does. He flies overhead in his airplane. If he sees you in the street below, he reaches out and drops a bomb on your head. I pictured bombs as black iron balls about the size of a sauerkraut kettle.

  Every day the sirens screamed to tell us the bombs were coming. We stayed in the cellar and went out at night. That’s when I learned the reality of bombs. Beyond the rooftops the city was on fire. It looked like the sun was stuck.

  Those were the days and nights.

  On some nights we were a city of two. We did not have to snatch. We simply walked into the empty shops of bakers and butchers and grocers and took whatever we pleased and walked out and walked home. We did not run. The streetlights were out.

  Sometimes in the night we went to the stable. The others were there. Everyone put food into a big pile. We wrestled in the food before we ate it. We clubbed each other blindly with arm-long sausages. Cigarette tips glowed orange in the dark. The horses were gone. The stableman never came shouting anymore.

  Then one day the sirens were silent.

  Uri and I were home, in our basement. Uri said, “Stay here,” and went outside, and when he came back he said, “Let’s go.” He stuffed a cheese into his pocket and one into mine and we went up through the barbershop and into the street.

  We walked fast. I could not keep up. Uri took my hand and pulled me. People were out. They were heading the way we were going. We passed the black, twisted skeletons of streetcars. Sometimes we had to trot down the middle of the street because the walls of buildings had crumpled and spilled over the sidewalks. Stacks of sandbags were everywhere.

  People were hurrying. Machine guns looked to me like praying mantises. Airplanes flew overhead but no bombs fell from them.

  I saw someone running. That was all I needed. I could not walk if someone else was running. I broke loose from Uri. Others were running. It was a race! I didn’t know where the finish line was, but I was determined to win. Many had shouted, “Stop!” but no one had ever caught me. The street was getting more and more crowded as people poured into it. I streaked through the crowds. I passed other runners. I didn’t care how many there were—I would beat them all. I laughed as I ran.

  Then I was aware of a noise. I felt it before I heard it. It was deep and grumbling and seemed to come from beneath the streets. And there was another sound. It was like the beat of a great drum, or a thousand drums, and the more I ran, the louder it became. And now the people were mobbed, piled like bombed bricks, the spaces between them gone, but I found spaces—I always found spaces—and I darted through them, I could taste the finish line, and suddenly I broke free, I burst out of the mob, I was in nothing but space and the drumbeat was deafening. “I won!” I shouted, and threw up my hands in victory. And then something hit me on the ear, and I was on the ground and the drumbeat was rolling over me. I looked up and I saw boots. The tallest, blackest, shiniest boots I had ever seen, endless columns. For an instant I saw my gaping face in one of them.

  I knew what I must be seeing; Uri had spoken often of them. I gasped aloud: “Jackboots!”

  They were magnificent. There were men attached to them, but it was as if the boots were wearing the men. They did not walk like ordinary footwear, the boots. When one stood at tall, stiff attention, the other swung straight out till it was so high I could have walked under it; only then did it return to earth and the other take off. A thousand of them swinging up as one, falling like the footstep of a single, thousand-footed giant. Leaves leaped.

  The parade of Jackboots went on forever. Uri told me later that the street of the parade was so wonderfully wide it was not even called a street but a boulevard.

  And then I was in the air. A hand had hoisted me up and I was dangling above the street and returned to my feet. A soldier was smiling down at me. His boots came to my shoulder, and his gray uniform was piped and spangled with silver. The brim of his hat was black and shiny like the boots; above it glistened a silver bird that I knew the boys in the stable would have loved to steal.

  The soldier smiled down at me. He mussed my hair and pinched my cheek. “Tiny little Jew,” he said. “Happy to see us, are you?”

  “I’m not a Jew,” I told him. I held up my yellow stone. “I’m a Gypsy.”

  My reply delighted him. “Ah, so, a Gypsy. Good! Very good!”

  And he took me under both arms and lifted me and deposited me back on the sidewalk, at the front of the crowd. “Good day, little Gypsy,” he said. And then the smile left his face and he stood tall and the heels of the boots snapped together with a clack and he saluted me and marched off.

  The march of the Jackboots went on and on. After a while Uri found me. “Look,” I said, “the Jackboots!” I thought he would cheer, but he did not. He stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. I looked at the faces of the crowd. No one was cheering, or even smiling. I was surprised. Weren’t they thrilled by the spectacle before them?


  And now the deep grumbling was getting louder and beginning to overcome the drumbeat of the Jackboots. I had always looked to the sky for thunder, but this thunder was coming from beneath my feet. The street itself was trembling. And then I saw them. . . .

  “Uri!” I cried.

  “Tanks,” he said.

  Colossal gray long-snouted beetles—the tanks roared up the boulevard four by four and the sky shook on its hinges and I saw at once how silly it had been to try to stop them with ditches and sandbags and machine guns. I clamped my hands over my ears. A single white flower flew out of the crowd. It bounced from the iron flank of a tank and broke into petals. I had no flower, so I threw my cheese.

  6

  Uri and I walked outside the next morning to see how it was different. The tanks were gone. The Jackboots were strolling about just like us. They looked at the people and spoke to each other. I couldn’t stop staring at them.

  A crowd was running. We turned a corner. There was a large truck with the back open. Soldiers were tossing loaves of bread. The people grabbed and scrambled. We munched our cheeses, watching. I was fascinated. I had not known bread could be given.

  We walked on. We came to another crowd of people, gathered around something on the sidewalk. “Don’t,” said Uri, but I did. I squeezed my way to the front. There was a man in a long black coat on his hands and knees. He had a long gray beard. Beside him was a bucket of water. He was dipping his beard into the water and scrubbing the sidewalk with the beard. A pair of Jackboot soldiers stood above him, laughing. Some of the people were laughing too. The man in black was not laughing.

  I came back to Uri. I tugged on his arm. “Come see. There’s a man cleaning the sidewalk with his beard!”

  Uri smacked my head. “You are stupid.” He pulled me away.

  Farther on we saw something else that made us stop. Two soldiers were standing in front of another bearded man in black. One of the soldiers had a pair of scissors. He was cutting off the man’s beard and the black hair that came curling down over his ears.

  I ran up to the soldiers. “Bring him to our place,” I said. “We live in a barbershop. He can sit in our red chair. We have bottles of hair tonic.”

  The soldiers stared at me. Uri grabbed me. He said words to them that I could not understand. The soldiers laughed. Uri yanked me away.

  We heard the soldiers laughing behind us. I thought: Men in beards and long black coats do not laugh.

  Later that day we sat on our beds eating chocolate babkas.

  Uri said, “Stay away from Jackboots.”

  “They smile,” I said.

  “They hate you.”

  I laughed. “They don’t hate me. They say, ‘Very good, little Gypsy.’ They salute me. I want to be a Jackboot.”

  He smacked me in the face. My babka went flying. “You’re not a Jackboot. You’ll never be a Jackboot. You are what you are.”

  I gathered up my babka. Still, I wanted to be right about something. “The people love the tanks,” I said. “They ran to see them. They watched.”

  “They hate the tanks.”

  “Someone threw a flower.”

  He gave a snort. “Coward. If the Jackboots say, ‘Kiss the tank’s behind,’ some people will do it.”

  I laughed, thinking of a tank’s behind.

  As I lay in bed that night, Uri’s voice came through the darkness. “You need a name.”

  “I have one,” I said.

  “A real one.”

  “Why?” I doubted him.

  “You should have one, that’s all. I want to know what to call you.”

  “Call me stupid.”

  He laughed.

  “You don’t remember what your parents called you?”

  “I don’t remember parents.”

  We were silent. I moved my fingertip over my yellow stone. I remembered a booming laugh and bright colors. The smell of horse and the taste of something sweet. Riding someone’s shoulder and hair glittering in firelight.

  At last Uri’s voice came again. “I had a little brother.”

  “Is he dead?” I said.

  “Yes. I think so. He must be.”

  “Did he have a name?”

  “Jozef.”

  “Was he little like me?”

  “He was. And growing fast.”

  “Do you remember your parents?”

  “Yes. But less and less.”

  I asked in the darkness, “Do you remember riding a shoulder?” but no answer came.

  I closed my eyes and I thought over and over of Uri’s words: You are what you are.

  Which is what? I wondered.

  In my mind I saw the man in black scrubbing the sidewalk with his beard. And the other man and the laughing soldiers with the scissors—snip snip—and the hair falling to the sidewalk, black hair falling . . .

  My eyes popped open, though in the blackness there was nothing to see. “They’re Jews!” I blurted.

  Uri snorted. “Who says you’re stupid?”

  7

  Those were the good times.

  Our icebox, our cellar shelves, were full of food. We ate peaches in brandy and peanut butter and caviar sandwiches. We ate apples and lemon Danish and cheese puffs and hickory-smoked trout. We ate candy all day long. My favorite was buttercream with a hazelnut inside. There was usually only one to a candy box and often not even that, and I was not good at telling them on sight. So I broke open chocolates by the hundreds, searching for my prize. I raced through candy shops tossing boxes into a sack and raced out to the usual chorus of “Stop! Thief!” At home I frantically dug for hazelnut buttercreams, flinging the rest aside. Uri scolded me for wasting. Except for the candy, he made me finish eating everything I started.

  As for Uri, he loved pickles. Big fat juicy pickles. They floated in barrels of brine in grocery stores. The urge would strike him suddenly. He would pop up: “Let’s go. Pickle run.”

  We went on many pickle runs because Uri would eat only fresh pickles. If a pickle had been out of the brine more than a day, he stuck his nose up at it. This meant we had to keep finding new stores. No one ever saw him take anything, but after a while a grocer would begin to notice that whenever a certain red-haired boy came into the store, pickles disappeared.

  On the way to a pickle place I was not allowed to snatch anything. Uri did not want his pickle run spoiled by a snatch-and-run of mine. But on the way back, as he contentedly ate his prize, I was allowed to do as I wished.

  Uri usually took things from store shelves and counters. Except for candy, I took from people. We would be strolling along, pickle juice from Uri’s chin spattering the sidewalk, when I would see something and take it. Off I went, weaving through the crowds of people, while Uri munched away, pretending he didn’t know me.

  Back home, he would say, “How did you do that?”

  I would shrug. “I just do it.”

  “You’re amazing,” he would say, and I would feel like a buttercream with a hazelnut heart.

  Sometimes Uri went out alone. Scouting, he called it. He told me to stay put.

  One time I did not stay put. It was not long after the Jackboots came. I got it into my head to go to the grand boulevard and see the parade again. That’s what I believed: The parade was never-ending, it went on day and night. And I was missing it!

  I climbed out of the cellar and started running. But when I came to the grand boulevard, there was no parade. There were streetcars and automobiles and people upon people, but no parade. I saw two Jackboots walking. I ran up to them. “Where is the parade?”

  The tall one laughed. “You’re five days late. It’s over.”

  I tried to understand. “Are the tanks gone?”

  “Not gone.”

  “Uri says you hate me,” I told them, “but I don’t believe him.”

  “Good.”

  “I want to be a Jackboot someday.”

  The tall one said something to the other, but I could not understand the words. He reached down a
nd ran his fingers through my short hair. “Someday, dark little boy. Are you a Jew?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m a Gypsy. Are you a Jew?”

  Again he smiled and said something to the other, who did not smile. “Let’s hope not,” he said, and they walked on.

  I saw a lady carrying cream puffs. Don’t ask me how I knew they were cream puffs. It was a white pastry box like any other, wrapped in white string. I just had a sense about those things. Maybe it came from snatching food for as long as I could remember.

  I was coming up behind her. She wore a red coat, as the air was chilly. The seams of her stockings were perfect black lines running from her heels to the hem of the coat. Her blond hair spilled from a little black hat. The pastry box dangled from one hand.

  She was not a screamer. Not everyone was. After I snatched the box, I heard no screams behind me. No footsteps either. She was not a chaser. Still, I ran. I always ran. I did not know how not to run. That was my life: I snatched, I ran, I ate.

  So I was running, chased by myself you might say, and I turned a corner and was suddenly flat on my back. I had run into someone. A boy. With one arm.

  “Gypsy!” he cried.

  “My cream puffs!” I cried.

  They were scattered about the sidewalk. So were his cherry turnovers. He reached for a cream puff and threw it at my face. I threw one at him. We laughed and scooped vanilla cream puff filling from our cheeks and ate it. We scooped vanilla filling and cherry goop from the sidewalk and what we didn’t eat we flung at each other, and in between we fell onto our backs and laughed. Walkers veered into the street to avoid us.

  “Well, well,” came a voice. “Little thieves.”

  It was a Jackboot, grinning down at us—and we were gone, fast as flies, One-Arm one way, me another, the Jackboot’s laughter fading.

  I ran down alleyways. I didn’t recognize where I was, but it didn’t matter. I was in the city. The only world I knew.