On second thought, he took the photograph out of the frame so it would weigh less.
Then he added a book about the history of flight, The Boy’s Book of Skills, and his plant identification book. His journal, of course. Then he looked around the room. There was nothing else he wanted or needed.
He was the first one back at the kitchen table with his pile.
Papa looked at his things. “Take the inside papers out of the journal,” he said. “That will make it lighter, easier to pack. I think I may have a clip somewhere you can use instead.”
Chaim nodded.
“And get your boots.”
Chaim ran back for the boots, then went into the bathroom for his toothbrush and the small tin of tooth powder, now almost empty.
When he got back to the kitchen, Sophie was already there, with a pile twice the size of his.
Papa was saying, “Keep the sweaters and one dress, the underclothes, but the rest—do you have trousers?”
She nodded.
“How many?”
“Two pairs.”
“Get them. They will serve you best in the woods. And a knapsack.”
“We never had any. We didn’t . . .” She looked, Chaim thought, sad. Or maybe just embarrassed.
“Didn’t go camping?” Chaim was astonished into three words. Everyone he knew went camping. But of course, the Norenbergs were big-city folk.
“Don’t worry,” Papa said, “we have an extra one or two around. But you’ll want to travel light.”
As she ran back to her room, he called after her, “And your boots.”
Just as Chaim was showing Papa the rest of what he’d chosen, getting nods from Papa that made him smile inwardly, Gittel came into the room with what she’d amassed.
“Three pairs of trousers, a pair of good boots, three sweaters, three blouses, underwear, socks . . .” Papa’s voice was very approving. She’d also stuck in her ratty old doll that had been Bubbe’s. The two packs of playing cards. A small bottle of shampoo.
“That will very likely break and make a mess,” Papa warned.
“But my hair?”
He shook his head.
Reluctantly she put it aside.
Then she showed him the Bible and a book about flower identification.
“Why the Bible?” Papa asked.
“Good stories for courage. And maybe . . .”
“Maybe?” Papa looked puzzled.
“Maybe it will help,” she said.
Papa didn’t have an answer for that.
“And the flower book in case we might, you know, need to know if certain plants can be eaten. Or used as medicines.”
“I have a plant book,” Chaim said.
“Very smart,” Papa told them, “both of you.”
Just then Sophie returned with her boots and a book of poems as well. Rilke, of course.
Papa smiled and said something in passable German.
“What does that mean, Papa?” Gittel asked. “I don’t remember much of my German vocabulary. That was three years ago.”
“It’s from one of Rilke’s poems,” Sophie said, translating. “‘There were cliffs and woods that straggled. Bridges hanging over voids. And a big gray, blind lake—’”
“I do hope,” Mama said, coming into the room, “that the forest we are going to is as lovely as all that.” She set her clothing down on the table, adding, “I’m taking my shampoo because my knapsack has little pockets and those sorts of things will be safe, and . . .”
Gittel handed her the cast-off bottle of her own shampoo, and Mama added it to her pile.
Just then, Bruno made an entrance. Rather like an actor on a stage, Chaim thought, needing the spotlight.
“I’ve got all my choices,” Bruno said. Amazingly, much of it was clothing, sensible, too. And a pair of boots. Chaim thought he’d probably been listening at the door to what Papa had said to everyone else. He also had the full set of his comics collection in their heavy binders.
“You’re bringing all of those?” Sophie asked. “There must be ten of them.”
“Twelve,” Bruno boasted.
“They must weigh a ton,” Gittel said.
“What if there’s nothing to do in the woods?”
Chaim couldn’t help himself. One look at his sister’s astonished face, and he broke out into laughter. Soon she joined him and then Sophie did, too.
Bruno’s cheeks got redder and redder. “What? What? You don’t believe someone can be bored in a forest? Well, I will be.”
Even Papa smiled, then said quietly to Bruno, “This isn’t about entertainment, Bruno, but about life and death.”
“Don’t frighten the children,” Mama said.
Papa gave her a strange look, then turned back to Bruno. “Pick your five favorites.”
“Seven?” Bruno asked.
Papa’s lips thinned out, and he glanced back at Mama. She nodded almost imperceptibly, but Chaim noticed.
“Seven,” Papa agreed. “But no one else will help you carry them if they become too heavy.”
That seemed to settle everything, but then Papa put a small bag on the table and began taking things out of it. There were five sharp knives of varying sizes, in sheaths, one for each of the children and Mama. He handed them out.
“What about Mutti?” Bruno asked.
Papa said slowly, carefully, “I don’t think she would be able to use it.”
Sophie nodded, but Bruno didn’t look convinced. “I could carry it for her.”
Mama said, “Avram will defend her to the death with his knife. She’s in good hands.”
“Me too,” Chaim added.
Not to be outdone, Bruno held his knife up like the last hero in one of his comic books. “My mother, my knife.”
“Good,” said Papa. “Now we’re almost ready. You’ll find all kinds of uses for these knives, and not just for defense,” he said. “Digging, scraping, severing fruit stems from a tree—”
“Papa.” Gittel breathed in. “You never let us handle those before.”
“Difficult times, difficult choices,” he told her. “And with each goes a whetstone. I’ll show you later how to use it.” And then he gave each one of them a small map of Łódź and the area around it. “Tomorrow we’ll have a map drill.”
“What about Mrs. Norenberg?” asked Gittel.
“I’ll pack a bag for her,” Mama said. She turned to Sophie. “Does she have any sensible shoes, any sensible underwear, sweaters? If not, I can give her some of mine.”
Sophie whispered, “She has walking shoes and a couple of elegant pairs of trousers.”
Mama nodded. “Those will do. Can you can fetch me what you think is best? Is she awake or asleep over there?”
Sophie glanced at her mother. “In between, I think.”
“Let’s wait until she’s fast asleep in her bed. And then if you can get what is needed . . . Luckily Fajner gave Papa another week’s worth of pills for her in that magical paper bag!”
Sophie nodded. “She’ll need a knapsack, too, won’t she?”
“She can make do with that rather large pocketbook that goes over her shoulder,” Mama said. “There won’t be very much for her to carry. Oh—any jewelry. It will make good bargaining should we need it.”
“Not my mother’s jewelry,” Bruno said. “Papa would be furious. Why not yours?”
“Except for my wedding ring, child, I’ve sold the last of it so you children can eat.”
“Potato peelings and old carrots?” Bruno muttered.
“Some people don’t have that much,” Mama said, unwilling to be drawn into his mood.
“The very last of Mama’s jewelry excepting that ring was sold to get us the money for this adventure,” Papa said. “Chaim risked his life to do it.”
&n
bsp; “Some adventure!” Bruno groused, but said nothing more about the jewelry.
“I have a gold necklace,” Sophie told them. “It was the only gift I ever got from my mother’s parents.”
“Bring it with us,” Mama said. “But we will only use it if we have to.”
There was a deep moment of silence as they each thought about the plan.
During that interval, Chaim looked around the room, which he normally regarded with loathing—its tattered curtains, rickety furniture, the kitchen that no amount of cleaning ever managed to leave looking fresh. And the horrible smell of the place.
And yet to leave it . . .
“Good,” said Papa, “we’re all agreed.”
And that, thought Chaim, is the end of the beginning of Plan A.
Papa hadn’t mentioned where they were going or how they would get there. Chaim wondered if that silence was deliberate on his father’s part or just forgetfulness. Though Papa, he thought passionately, never forgets anything. Not anything important.
He took one of the pages of his journal out of the backpack, found one of two pens, and then scribbled quickly:
There is no plan that cannot be unmade.
Three negatives in a row and it is gone,
like dust in the hands. We are such dust
in God’s plans. We fall through His fingers . . .
But he got no further than that, for even he could see that to write about the plan in such a negative way could well curse it before it was even attempted.
He shoved the page and pen into the pack and didn’t look at it again until days later.
* * *
• • •
When he finally fell asleep that night, the fears—like Nazi collaborators—infiltrated his dreams.
Gittel Remembers
When we lived in our big house, Papa often took us hiking and even camping in Łagiewniki Park in the northeastern part of the city. Even then it had its ghosts, for there insurgents had risen up against the Russian tsar.
“It was ten years before the actual Russian Revolution,” Papa had said when he told us the story of the battle and showed us where the fighting had taken place. “The insurgents rose a little too soon for success. It’s sacred ground.” He’d knelt and touched a hand to a bare spot in the meadow.
Much Polish blood had been spilled that uprising day, and sometimes, when we slept out in our little tent and the wind was blowing through the trees, I’d wake terrified by nightmares about dead warriors.
Papa would say, “You’ve just been hearing a rebel lullaby,” and then he would sing me to sleep. I still remember the words of the first verse. I was usually asleep by the second.
We are the warriors,
We rise with the sun
And then we go to work
Until our awful work is done.
Blood that calls for blood,
Fire calls for fire,
We are the mighty warriors,
May we never tire.
I suspect Papa made up the words using an old melody, or maybe Zaide did, for he had taken Papa camping in Łagiewniki when Papa was a boy. Either way, it comforted me to believe that we both loved that song about warriors who never tired.
We always carried a full picnic basket that Mama had packed for us, but she never came along because she said that “a day and night without the family is just the rest I need!” Though every time we returned home from a camping trip, the house had been cleaned top to bottom, so I guessed there had been little actual rest involved.
We hiked the trails. We gathered wild mushrooms under Papa’s careful guidance. We were allowed to go to sleep dirty and wake only to wash our hands and face in one of the many small streams. It was heaven!
We were too young then to use knives like the bone-handled one Papa used to cut kindling for our fire, or to chop mushrooms, but we knew how to use a compass and check the sky for rain. Papa had taught us the various cloud formations. And we recited the names of the trees as we walked—oak, spruce, birch being the main ones. And birds. We knew their names, too. Papa told us stories about the birch maidens that he’d heard from his own grandfather.
But even as I recall those lovely times, I have to recall the bad ones, too, when we were on the run from the “wedding invitation” and racing through Łagiewniki and the other forest with no goal but survival.
12
The next morning, early, when the family gathered at the breakfast table—all but Mrs. Norenberg, who was still in a drugged sleep—there was a whetstone set at each place, like five jewels, instead of the thin morning gruel.
Papa was standing against the wall, arms crossed, sucking on one of his hard candies. He looks a bit ragged, Chaim thought, as if he hadn’t slept much because of coughing. It was a puzzle to Chaim, because Papa hadn’t racked their shared bed with spasms. Maybe, he thought, Papa slept on the sofa in the living room or did his coughing in the kitchen.
As the children came in to take their chairs, Papa said, “The whetstone lesson.”
“Can’t we have something to eat first?” Bruno was always predictable.
“Lesson first,” Papa said. “Go and get your knives.”
They trotted back to their rooms to unpack their knives, except for Chaim. Warned by his father in their shared room as they were getting dressed, he already had his knife with him.
When they gathered again, Papa said, “Hold the knife to the light and check the angle. That’s the angle you should sharpen it at. Don’t fight the knife, holding it at a different slant. It will only frustrate you and hurt the knife.”
Chaim was the first to look at his knife by the light of the kitchen window, and he could see at once what Papa meant. When he glanced away, he saw the others were rapt in their knives’ angles as well. Either that or they were partly still asleep.
Papa showed them how to use the stone, how much oil to use. And then he showed them the rest of the sharpening and honing techniques.
It seemed to Chaim that this was more than just a lesson in how to use and keep a knife. It was a lesson in how to plan ahead and be safe.
About fifteen minutes into the lesson, Mama came in with the thin gruel made from potato peelings and set it down on the table. There were also some hard bits of brown bread. “And the last of the plum jam,” Mama added, as she brought the jar out of her apron pocket. “End of lesson for now. Children must eat. And so, Avram, should you.”
“But, Mama,” Gittel said, “what about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we will graze in Eden,” Mama said, somewhat mysteriously.
Perhaps, Chaim thought, Mama’s lesson was the same as Papa’s.
He thought of the beginning of a poem but lost it halfway into the bread and the jam.
* * *
• • •
The rest of the morning was filled with chores, mostly the delivery of extra clothing and books to the neighbors.
Chaim was worried that giving away all that stuff might signal to the neighbors that they were planning an escape. Someone—anyone—could tell on them.
Mama said, “I have mentioned that the rabbi brought us bundles of things to distribute. And then asked them to make a list of what else was needed so that I could pass that information on to the council.”
Who knew Mama could be so tricky? Chaim thought, and he admired her for it, even as he wondered if that counted as lying.
As they carried a bundle of clothing down to the fourth floor, Chaim whispered, “Mama told a lie!” He was certain that had never happened before.
Gittel smiled. “A lie to save a life is only a small sin. A lie to take a life is a large one.”
* * *
• • •
Afterward, when they were returning to their apartment having made the deliveries, Chaim grumbled to Gittel, “It’s like we’re bein
g honed.”
She giggled. “Then we should be pretty sharp by the time we get to wherever we’re going.”
* * *
• • •
Around two in the afternoon, Papa suddenly came into the bedroom. Chaim was just repacking his knapsack for the third time, putting back the biplane he had taken out the second time. When he looked up, he saw that Papa had an odd, almost peaceful expression on his face.
“Chaim, come with me,” Papa said. He had a paper sack in his arms.
“Where to?” Might as well ask for information, Chaim thought. He’s not going to just volunteer it.
“Taking this sack downstairs to the Horowitz brothers.”
Chaim knew them only by sight, a pair of middle-aged brothers, widowers, who rarely spoke to anyone else. “Why me?”
“Because I want you to,” Papa said, and then gave an acute single cough as if punctuating his sentence.
They went downstairs to the second floor, way in the back of the building. Papa knocked on the door, and when the peephole showed a bit of light, Chaim knew they were being checked out.
The brothers were wearing prayer shawls.
“But they’re not in shul,” Chaim whispered.
“Afternoon prayers, called mincha,” Papa said.
The taller brother mumbled, “Come in,” and took two prayer shawls off a coat rack and handed them to Chaim and Papa. “I think,” he said, looking meaningfully at Chaim, “that you are a man now. And even though you are not yet married, a tallit around your shoulders for prayers will not go amiss. We live in desperate times.”
Papa wrapped his shawl around his shoulders with ease, but Chaim stumbled a bit adjusting it. Like a physical stutter, he thought.
“A prayer wouldn’t hurt,” Papa said to Chaim. “And these are two righteous men. Who better to pray with?” He set the paper sack down on the old, rickety foyer table.
Papa praying and with a prayer shawl? Maybe the world is actually coming to an end, not just Łódź. Chaim started to tremble, enough so that when he wrapped the shawl over his shoulders, the tassels began to dance.