A Boy in Winter Read online

  Friends and neighbours had passed on advice, word of mouth: Take enough for the winter; we must see ourselves through the worst months. They’d worked out ways to carry more than the allowance, wearing extra layers, sewing rings into hems, and savings into linings; and they’d made lists of items to take, valued weight for weight. You must bring any tools of your trade. There was so much practical sense in what they said; Ephraim had even found it comforting, in its own way, this wisdom in adversity.

  So he’d packed up his optician’s tools, salvaged from his small practice rooms—careful, as he always was. And he’d called Yankel to him: his eldest, and the most puzzling of his children. A worry, always; such a cause of worry for him.

  The boy came while Ephraim sat wrapping his pliers, his screwdrivers and his callipers for the journey. Yankel came to stand just inside the door as he was packing his briefcase, so Ephraim had to talk half to his tools, half over his shoulder, as he stooped over his workbench to select the best of his lenses, and the best soft leather to protect them. And he could feel his son becoming quickly restive behind him, eyes and fingers restless, the way he always is. Such a fine-fingered, fine-featured boy, so like his mother with his brown curls and paleness—but without her stillness; Yankel can never stand and listen for any length of time without shifting.

  All the same, Ephraim began talking. Telling him how their friends and neighbours had been planning for their resettlement; and how their forefathers had started anew with far less, over and over, down the centuries.

  “It seems this is our burden,” he said, slow and careful, because he didn’t understand it himself; Ephraim hadn’t yet reconciled himself. But when he glanced at Yankel—uncomfortable with being spoken to so seriously, and perhaps just as uncomfortable with the harsh truths he was being told this evening—Ephraim felt himself soften towards his puzzling child. The boy must find it so bewildering, after all, this packing up and leaving, and being told that this is how it’s always been. So Ephraim sighed: “How I would it were different, my boy.”

  There was a hush then between them, a few seconds of something like understanding, as Ephraim fastened his briefcase buckles. And because he felt Yankel listening—the boy was really listening, for once—Ephraim spoke to him from the heart that evening; about how much it perplexed him, this sore and cruel history of their people; and how he’d far rather they’d been spared this, at least for another generation.

  “You do know, my child, the Germans are only the latest to demand this.”

  They’d had the same from the priests and the nobles; the same going back into time immemorial.

  “So we will endure it.”

  Ephraim said they would line up with dignity when the time came, and then put down his tools and turned to face his eldest.

  “We have to,” he told him. “So we will be able. Do you see now?”

  But if he did, Yankel didn’t show it.

  His eyes, that had seemed to be attentive, that had seemed to be so interested only moments before, closing suddenly over, turning hurriedly inward, as soon as Ephraim turned his gaze on his son.

  Ephraim saw Yankel’s full-lipped paleness and the boyish jut of his jaw, he saw the stubbornness of all his son’s thirteen years—but not what he was thinking, not any longer. So beautiful, that young face of his, but so hard to read. The boy was so hard to reach; even on those rare occasions, like that evening, when Ephraim tried his best to open his heart to his son.

  The schoolmaster said much the same about him. I am never sure, never quite certain, if Yankel believes schoolmasters are worth his attention; he wore the same closed expression, displayed the same restless wish to be elsewhere, outside, anywhere but the classroom, and the teacher took it all with his quiet good humour. He’ll listen, your son, but only for so long, Ephraim. There will only ever be so much I can teach him.

  Yankel’s school reports were never as good as Ephraim’s own had been; nor were they as good as Rosa’s, who started school three years after, but quickly caught him up. The boy learned to read just as fast, and his fingers were just as fine as hers. But not his penmanship, or his thinking. His books were blotted and streaked and smeary; he thought in rash and bold strokes, and only ever in short bursts, it seemed to Ephraim, who saw how quickly his eldest grew distracted by daydreams during prayers, or the singing of the Torah—even over mealtimes at their family table. He assumed his son was much the same when seated at lessons.

  When the long school morning is over, that’s when the best hours of Yankel’s day come: this was the schoolmaster’s verdict.

  His eldest went to the river instead of doing his homework, Ephraim knew this. Yankel copied down the other boys’ answers—or even Rosa’s—hunkered on the town-hall steps; Ephraim heard all about it from his customers, and from the other shopkeepers in his small row. In the warm months, when the waters were full and slow, they’d tell him how they’d seen his Yankel wading in the shallows, following the trout shoals. Or crouching in the long grass on the banks, in amongst the insect crawl and hum, whittling at sticks he’d found there, spending hours at little carvings with his clasp knife.

  If it were all such harmless pastimes, Ephraim wouldn’t have minded—or not so much. But Yankel also joined in with all the working boys when they took it upon themselves to jump from the town bridge into the waters. For the town boys this was a badge of honour, for the farmhands a chance to wash themselves on market days, and Ephraim was uncomfortable with his son’s wish to emulate. His boy’s body was slender, more sinew and bone than brawn, not built for the hard knocks that working boys seemed to thrive on. But would Yankel listen to him? Yankel would never be told. The boy would nod, as though he’d heard—and then do whatever he wanted.

  When the river was frozen, Yankel would slide out on his boot-soles, on a working boy’s wager, arms out for balance, jutting out at all angles, and a trail of the younger children following behind him onto the ice, once he’d tested it for them. Each winter, Yankel wanted to be the first to dare; always first and furthest, but never in his schoolwork.

  When there was ripe fruit to climb for, he strode out to the orchards. Yankel slept out in barns, or under the stars when the nights got warm enough—or even when they weren’t yet—returning home unwashed and coughing, with barked shins and bruises, and boughs of fruit wood for carving. His mother enforced bed rest and poultices, and she fussed and she scolded. But Miryam could never stop him.

  Three summers in a row, Yankel was brought home by one or another irate orchard worker; or made to pick for an afternoon in lieu of fruit he’d stolen, fruit branches he’d broken. He limped home from those afternoons exhausted, with fruit-stained shirt and fingers, but the will Yankel was born with seemed to come with vigour to match it, and those afternoons of labouring never served to rein him in.

  He ranged all over—with Momik in tow, as soon as Momik was old enough. And Miryam allowed this. Miryam indulged it.

  Ephraim’s wife is younger; her own youth not so long ago, she still understands its headstrong nature. But there is more to it than that, he thinks: Miryam allows their sons far more leeway than she does their Rosa, giving in to Yankel’s stubbornness, just as her own mother always gave way to her self-willed eldest.

  And this is the nub of it.

  Miryam’s wayward brother left for Odessa when she was still a young girl, and then he left the country entirely, sailing for Palestine not long before Ephraim married her. Ephraim hardly knew Jaakov, only that he struck out on his own path. And that Miryam loved him for it, almost as much as she missed him.

  So however much she fusses over Yankel’s coughs and his bruises, she also takes quiet delight in his adventures. And in how much their oldest dotes on their youngest son. Lucky to have such a brother; they are lucky to have one another.

  As soon as Momik was walking, Yankel took him everywhere, and if the little one got tired, Miryam didn’t mind. She said Yankel carried him, easy; she’d seen how he pulled Momik onto h
is shoulders and kicked stones down the road ahead of them to entertain him. Better to carry him than leave him trailing.

  True as that may be, Ephraim could never rest with the thought of what their oldest did in those hours, of what risks he took with their youngest.

  Once the cherries were dark enough, Yankel would lift Momik into the branches, and climb up after him. And Yankel was wise enough by then to the farmers, so if anyone came after them, he knew the best paths to run, and ditches or thickets to crouch in until they’d gone again; no need to be frightened. That’s what he told Momik, most probably. It’s what he told Miryam, whose misplaced trust was boundless. Don’t worry so: he’ll grow out of it.

  In the meantime, the child is incapable of following orders. Ephraim knows it would be just like Yankel to hole up somewhere, not line up for the Germans—and it would be just like him to take Momik. Most likely he told his brother that the Germans would never find them: the schoolmaster had carried on teaching them, after all, and the Germans never found out about that.

  After the school was closed, the master gave lessons in his parlour. Just to Yankel and Rosa and a handful of others, within the short hours the new laws allowed them. The new laws meant they had to hurry home again afterwards.

  “Swiftly, yes?” Ephraim reminded them before they left each morning. “No dawdling and talking. No forgetting your armbands. And no stopping at the riverbank and whittling either.”

  He knew that Yankel still worked at sticks and branches instead of his homework, and that he waded in shoeless under the shade of the town bridge, where he thought he couldn’t be spotted by his elders—the schoolmaster had passed on this much.

  The farm boys gathered there in the summer when the Communists fled and the Germans were overrunning the country; they crowded on the riverbank and told each other tales of the fighting, and of partisan hideouts. There were so many rumours at that time of marsh strongholds and brave marsh fighters—Ukrainians who would avenge them, and return the land to its own people—Yankel carved an entire orchard for Momik to play with while crouched in the shade beside those waters, listening to those tall stories. Ephraim thought he may even have heard more of them in the schoolmaster’s parlour; he wouldn’t put it past the old man to have hope in such fantasies. So, after the Germans brought in their new laws, he was careful to impress on Yankel the need to heed them.

  “You do understand, my boy, that we cannot afford to just ignore them.”

  It was not right that they had to bow to such unfairness; Ephraim did not want Yankel thinking it was just. But he did want him to see the necessity.

  And the boy did see how things had changed for them, because he minded Ephraim’s instruction at first, pulling Rosa home in good time—even telling Momik he was to stay inside the house.

  Except some of those September afternoons were as hot as any in June, and the water so tempting. Even to Rosa—who confessed all to her mother, but only after the fact, when it was all too late.

  It turned out that Yankel had his sister keep watch by their shoes on the bank, just to be safe, and she told her mother how no patrols ever came their way, so she took to reading instead of watching; Rosa took to daydreaming. She even tied up her dress once to join Yankel in the water.

  But the current caught at her skirts, and then Rosa got frightened: if Miryam saw the wet hems, or worse, if Ephraim saw the splashes; you know how Papa is.

  She told her mother how she tugged at the knots, hauling at the cloth, pulling her skirts higher, retying, but the water was stronger. It pulled them sodden against her legs, leaving them clinging there. And Ephraim knew his daughter as well as she knew him: by the time Yankel turned and saw her, she would have been pink with tears in the summer-slow waters.

  But even so, even so, they were still inside the curfew; Ephraim thought they could have hurried home, even then—barefoot if need be.

  Except townsmen had stopped to watch them. And others had begun joining them: leaning on the mossy bridge walls, looking downwards, to see who was below there. They were pointing at Rosa in her wet skirts and armband, and they were jeering. Grinning over the Jew girl. Miryam didn’t have to say it out loud, Ephraim understood how such townsmen were.

  But Yankel saw no danger.

  Yankel threw stones at them.

  Instead of turning home, as he ought, with his sister in tow, his son threw stones at the offenders. He stood in the shallows, hurling pebbles and his half-finished carvings—curses as well—until the townsmen ducked and fled. They flung oaths over their shoulders in return, but Yankel didn’t care.

  “Why should I?” He told Ephraim this, defiant.

  So surprising, to hear his quiet son speak so loudly. To see Yankel flush too, taking stubborn pride in it, his own thoughtlessness. It gives Ephraim a sharp stab to remember—that the child couldn’t see what he’d done. No sense of his own fragility, of the narrowness of those dear shoulders—or of the risk he posed to all of them. Even when the patrol called at their house for days afterwards.

  Ephraim had to stand in the street each morning with the soldiers, and account for all their whereabouts. He kept Yankel inside the house at all times—he was taking no more chances. But the boy also had to overhear his daily repentance: “It will not happen again, you have my assurance, meine Herren.”

  Ephraim knew to appease them. But it was a daily abasement, a humiliation, and it was too hard to look at his son’s face after he was sent back inside; Ephraim kept his eyes averted.

  Yankel, in any case, kept his eyes on his schoolwork.

  Ephraim insisted he learn his lessons now in earnest, and as he was forbidden to open his workshop, he spent his days sitting with Yankel instead, to ensure the boy stayed bent for long enough over his books.

  “Learning weighs nothing,” he told him, over and over. “Lessons you can carry with you. Don’t you see it’s our learning, it is our knowledge that has carried us, all through the centuries?”

  Yankel did all the tasks the schoolmaster set him. But he would not look Ephraim in the eye any longer.

  Ephraim feels that same stab again.

  And then he thinks of those two empty beds he found, in the small hours of this morning.

  He had not slept a wink—who could sleep with such a day before them?—and still he had not heard them leaving. Rosa had cried and Miryam had brought her to lie in the bed between them; she would only quieten with Ephraim’s arms around her, so this is how he lay, all that short and awful night, while Miryam walked from room to room, folding and sorting, repacking their bags, just as unable to rest. She was taking leave, Ephraim thought, and again and again, he heard her tread on the stairs, across the floorboards, in the rooms below him and Rosa. But sleep must have taken even her in the end; perhaps it even took him for a while. Because there was quiet, Ephraim remembers, a strange kind of stillness—a torpor, that came over the house, even over the street outside it—and from which he was only roused by the neighbours’ door slamming shut as they left for the factory.

  He found Miryam downstairs, chin on her chest, in one of the tall chairs at the back of the kitchen, and it hurts him most to think of this. How startled she was to be woken, finding his hand on her arm—and how her hands flew up to cover her face when he told her that their boys were gone.

  He should have known Yankel would do this, he should have been listening; Ephraim thinks he could have stopped them.

  But now the whispers start again. Hushed murmurs passing through the crowd around him.

  Some in here have come as instructed, others have been brought under duress, but they have all been kept standing and waiting for so long now, they cannot help but whisper, cannot help but worry what might await them.

  Transport. Resettlement.

  “More of this same treatment.”

  Time and fear have given rise to many rumours, passing through the crowd and then back again.

  “There are ghettos in Lviv and in Minsk.”

  “Yes,
and in Poland.”

  “Didn’t I say so? Didn’t I say it’s a ghetto they have planned for us?”

  “Yes, three days’ travel, remember? They told us.”

  All around Ephraim, people try to find comfort in this ghetto prospect.

  “So it will be Łodz, maybe?”

  “You think?”

  “Or Warsaw, or Warsaw.”

  These names are familiar enough to offer some assurance.

  “In Łodz and Warsaw there are many of us.”

  There is consolation in the idea of such numbers. But some are still anxious: “A ghetto is a ghetto. Even with many inside it.”

  “Oh, even worse, then: can you imagine? There will be so many of us arriving.”

  And then a man nearby contests: “Will it be a ghetto, really? I heard otherwise. I heard it is a camp we’ll be taken to.”

  This sets off a flurry of rushed denials.

  “It’s not a camp.”

  “It is not a camp, no.”

  “It can’t be.”

  The whispers are flustered, disconcerted.

  “Better a ghetto than a camp.”

  “Better a ghetto.”

  “Yes, far better. And with our own kind.”

  Then the man interjects: “Enough talk. Enough of this mewling. I’ve heard enough of it.”

  Ephraim’s back hurts, his shoulders, so much standing is painful. His insides hurt just as much now from all the worrying, from all this waiting that weighs so heavy on all of them.

  But he keeps listening all the same now; he cannot help himself.

  And he finds himself listening out for this interjecting man especially, who objects to the mewling, as he calls the worries and the whispers. Ephraim knows that were he to turn and look, it would bring trouble from the guards, but the man’s voice is so much louder than the rest, coming from somewhere near the centre of the room, Ephraim has to fight the urge to turn and face him, fight the curiosity, because the man starts interrupting more often. The man starts making corrections, too.