Read The Night of the Burning Online
Authors: Linda Press Wulf
The Night of the Burning
LINDA PRESS WULF
The Orphanage in Pinsk, Poland
Glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish Words
For my husband’s mother, the Devorah Lehrman of this story, whom I never met
For my own mother, who shared my love of old-fashioned books for children
For my father, who taught me about crafting words
For my siblings, whose support and critical direction were essential to this story
For my Aunty Rhoda in the book-lined house on Avenue Normandie
For my husband and sons, who make my life good
1921
I didn’t giggle. Since the Night of the Burning, I hadn’t laughed. I knew I would never laugh again. The other children giggled behind their hands at the funny hat on the man who was visiting our orphanage. It was a firm brown felt hat that sailed on the top of his head like a boat, very different from the soft caps most men crammed down over their ears in our snowy Polish winters.
I stared at the strange man as he sat with the orphanage director, Alexander Bobrow, at the head of the old table where we ate our breakfast. He looked friendly and clean and soft. He reminded me a little of Papa. Papa’s face had been soft before he became so thin.
Maybe the strange man felt me staring at him through his skin, the way you feel the sun through your closed eyelids in the early morning, because suddenly he glanced up and smiled right at me.
Quickly I looked down and pretended to be absorbed in spooning up my lumpy porridge. I knew that when the bowl was empty, I would still not feel satisfied; there was never enough to fill my belly all the way to the top.
Sitting right next to me, Nechama was one of the children who giggled. Just like those other silly little girls. How dare she giggle; how dare she even smile? At nine years old, she was just a baby, so immature compared with me. I was twelve. I hated that she acted as if our lives had begun when the hay cart brought us here to the orphanage in Pinsk, less than a year before. There she sat, chattering brightly to two girls she called her “best friends.” I moved my chair firmly and loudly closer to hers. She was behaving as if she were actually happy. But whenever I talked about Mama and Papa, she squirmed away. I wanted so badly to talk about Mama and Papa. And I couldn’t talk to anyone else.
Nechama had finished her breakfast. She was touching her own hair admiringly and she lifted her clear eyes to me, not even noticing that I was angry.
“The big girls said that man will choose me. They said my curls are so pretty he’ll be sure to want me,” she said, twirling the soft wisps around her fingers.
“Which man? Choose you for what?”
“That man from Africa,” Nechama said, pointing at the stranger. “He’s taking children to Africa!” Then she caught sight of Malke leaving the room, jumped from her stool at the table, and ran off after her friend.
Africa. I turned the word over slowly in my mouth. It was open and hot, a word that hung in the air—Africah-ah. Not like the quick, lip-pursed word Europe. What was Nechama running on about? Some wild gossip made up by her new friends? Not a serious thought in their heads; just play and laugh, play and laugh.
I cleared both of our bowls from the table and wandered to the empty dormitory to sit on my straw mattress. Pulling my thick braid across my cheek, I chewed on the bristly end. There was a round black stove in the corner of the room, but the metal was icy cold. The grownups said we were short of coal. I wrapped my coat tightly around my chest and tried to pull the sleeves down farther, but the coat was meant for someone smaller. The skin on my fingers was cracked and red.
Squeezing one hand into my pocket for warmth, I felt the stiff paper of a photograph. Papa had given it to me before he died, and I always kept it in my pocket. After the Night of the Burning, when Nechama and I left our village on the hay cart to Pinsk, it was all I had with me. I didn’t even need to glance at it to see it clearly. In the photo our whole family was together, as in a dream—Papa and Mama side by side, Nechama a tiny baby in Mama’s arms, me on Papa’s knee. We were all smiling.
I must have drifted into sleep on my mattress. I was dreaming about Mama’s latkes. Usually Mama would cook the potato pancakes on the iron sheet on top of the stove,
but at Chanukah she fried them in precious, expensive oil.
“Ah, Mama,” Papa would sigh with satisfaction. “The pancakes are like angels singing.”
“More, Mama, more, Mama, more!” I would chant, and of course Nechama copied me.
Someone was shaking my shoulder gently. I groaned, trying to hold on to my dream. I was so happy being in my old life again. But the shaking continued and I opened my eyes a little. Mr. Bobrow’s face was looking down at me and his free hand was pushing his round spectacles back as they slipped down his nose. It was the director himself shaking my shoulder. I sat up immediately, wide awake. Where was the danger? Where was Nechama?
“Come, sad one,” Mr. Bobrow said. “Mr. Isaac Ochberg wants to meet you. He noticed your big eyes looking at him at breakfast, and he wants to see if he can put a smile on that face. He’s waiting for you.”
“Nechama?” I whispered.
“Nechama’s fine; she’s playing with her friends,” Mr. Bobrow said reassuringly. He patted my shoulder again with that concerned look on his face. “It’s all right, Devorah. You don’t have to be so scared all the time.”
I looked away so he wouldn’t see how angry that made me. Could he give his promise on the holy Torah that I didn’t have to be frightened? What if I stopped being on the watch for danger, and something happened again?
I climbed off the mattress silently, pulled down my tight coat, and tied back my hair with shaking hands. Trailing
behind Mr. Bobrow’s long legs, I followed him to the dining room. My anger had leaked away; now I was just plain scared. He pointed at the door, which was slightly ajar. He was sending me all alone into a room where a stranger waited.
“Come in with me,” I managed to whisper.
“You’ll be fine,” he replied. “You’re a lucky girl.” And then he walked off down the hallway. Me, lucky?
I tiptoed to the door and peered through the opening. The man called Isaac Ochberg sat reading a stack of papers. He had no whiskers on his round clean face; his ears stood out from his wavy reddish hair. Except that he wears that hat and has no beard, he looks like people from home, I thought. But my right eyelid was twitching from nervousness. Should I go in? Should I run away and find Nechama? Should I knock? Or just wait?
Suddenly Isaac Ochberg looked up and smiled at me the way he had at breakfast. There were big smile creases around his mouth. I slipped inside.
“Come here, little one, little”—he consulted the top paper in his pile and continued—“Devorah Lehrman. And your younger sister is Nechama, am I right?”
I nodded.
The man patted the bench next to him, and I sat down warily. “I’ll explain why I am here,” he began. “I’ve come a long way, from a country called South Africa, down at the tip of Africa. There are Jewish people there, and they’re worried about all the children in Europe who have no
fathers and mothers because of the Great War. And that craziness they call the Russian Revolution.”
I knew about the Great War and the Russian Revolution, but they meant nothing to me. I only thought about the morning when we tucked Papa’s blankets in to try to keep him warm, when he was already dead. And I thought about Mama before she died, calling for more water, more water, as the typhoid burned her from inside. I thought about the flames galloping through our village, the synagogue glowing red against the night.
I shook my head to get rid of those thoughts. I needed to concentrate on the strange things Mr. Ochberg was saying. “So they sent me to find two hundred children and bring them back to South Africa. It’s a beautiful country and a safe place for Jews. I’ll take you and your little sister. But only if you really want to go with me.”
I frowned at him in amazement. What did he mean?
“Do you want to come with me, Devorah—you and Nechama?”
I heard a huge gasp coming from my chest. Move to another country? That place called Africa? With a man Nechama and I didn’t know? My lips were quivering and my whole body had begun to shake.
The man looked at me closely. “Life will be better there, Devorah. You will have food and a warm, clean place to live. And you will go to school. You will even have toys and dolls. Have you ever seen a doll before, a really beautiful doll?”
A really beautiful doll. I could see in my mind, feel in my hands, not one but two stuffed dolls in embroidered dresses, one for me and the other for Nechama. Papa had bought them one year when the potato harvest was good and the peasants had plenty of money to buy his wares. Never before had we seen such elegant creatures. We wrapped them in clean rags and played with them only inside, only after washing our hands. I felt a burning behind my eyes. I hadn’t cried for months; I knew if I cried, I would split into pieces. I pressed my fingers hard against my eyelids.
The man moved closer and put his arm around me. “Mamaleh,” he murmured, “I know it has been terrible, mamaleh.”
Another raw gasp shot out of me. With one scoop, the man cradled me against him as if I were a small child, as if I were Nechama. I felt a deep hum in his chest as he began to sing,
“Inter yideles vigele
Shtayt a klur-vas tsigele …
Under the baby’s cradle,
stands a little white goat …”
I knew that lullaby. Papa and Mama had sung it to us many times. “It hurts,” I moaned. “Hurts.” The pain would tear me apart; I could not bear to let the pain out.
The man tightened his arms around me and I found myself gripping his wool sleeve, burrowing my face into its warmth. Sobs scraped my throat, rough, ragged sobs. The wool grew wet as I cried for my heart that was broken and my family that was broken and my home that was broken and would never be whole again.
My body was jerking, but the man held me strongly and went on singing,
“… Rozhinkes mit mandlen;
Shluf zhe, yidele, shluf.
Raisins and almonds;
Sleep, my little one, sleep.”
1915–16
The dolls were not the first presents that Papa had bought for us, but they were by far the best. He took them slowly out of his pockets one night when I was almost six and Nechama almost three. We were sitting close to the glowing stove and feeling happy to have our papa home again after one of his longer trips.
“Here is a very fine lady,” he announced dramatically, “who would like to meet my Devorahleh.” He waved a doll above my face as I gaped. Then Nechama yelped when Papa pulled out a companion doll.
“May I introduce Nechama, too, O beautiful ladies?” he asked the dolls seriously.
We shrieked and threw our arms around the warm hill that was Papa’s belly. Then we reached for his presents.
“Look, Mama, see how tiny the embroidery stitches are on their aprons,” I said, running my fingers over the miniature red and green flowers.
“They have real white stockings,” Nechama said, “and see the nice fat legs.”
“They’re not Jewish girls,” I pointed out. “See, their eyes are blue buttons and their hair is yellow wool, just like the Christian villagers’ on the other side of the pond.”