The Night of the Burning (8 page)

We raced off to wake the others with the news. This time it was my turn to run to my sister’s bed.

“Nechama, he’s getting better. Daddy’s getting better!”

I heard what my own voice had said and I blushed. Daddy was getting better, but Papa had not gotten better;
Papa had died. Was it all right to be so glad now?

Nechama reached up to hug me tightly and then we hugged little Faygele and everyone else nearby. I can feel their hearts, I thought, I can feel each one’s heart.

“Breakfast, and then your English class,” called Mr. Bobrow. “We need to prepare ourselves for our new country.” There was relief in his voice and his fingers trembled a little as he pushed up his spectacles.

Nechama couldn’t stop talking about Africa. She heard from the bigger girls that there were diamonds in the mines, and gold. Why, if we just dug a little, we would be able to buy as many dolls as we wanted. And great bowls of milk, and even fruit.

Sometimes I, too, thrilled with excitement at the thought of a new life, but there was a sadness that I hadn’t expected. It was the parting from Madame Engel. How could I leave my kind friend, who moved around her kitchen kingdom with her tall, regal bearing?

Daddy Ochberg is too busy to love any of the children more than the others, I thought. I never feel sure whether the special smile he gives me is given to each of the other children, too. But Madame’s smile is just for me. Madame Engel is the only grownup person in the world now who cares about me the most. Mama and Papa died; Aunt Friedka was killed; but Madame is still here. How can I leave her?

Yet I hadn’t been invited to stay. And there was
Nechama. Certainly Nechama would not change her mind about going to South Africa.

On our final morning in Warsaw, the sun outlined the gracious old buildings in gold as if to accentuate what we were leaving behind. We walked almost silently, two by two in a long line, to a dock on the banks of the Vistula River. Daddy Ochberg had almost all of his old energy as he packed us into a heavily laden riverboat.

“Pesha, you’re in charge of the ten-to-twelve-year-olds,” he called out. “Itzik, you take the eight-to-tens. Laya, you’re good with the six-to-eights, and I’ll manage the little ones with Mr. Bobrow. Children, put your suitcases under your benches and sit down. No moving around now.”

I gulped as I saw Madame Engel arrive at the dock to say goodbye. Madame must have been up since dawn to pack the two hundred food bags she was handing out. My heart was tight with pain as I watched the familiar figure move slowly along the lines of children. Finally she reached me, stopped, and held out her arms. I flew into them.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said, sobbing, but the words were strangled. I tightened my grip around her neck and buried my head under her chin.

Madame squeezed me close for a long time and then she held my face between her hands and looked into my eyes. Her face was as wet as mine. “You are strong as well as sad, mamaleh,” she whispered. “Hold on to the strength, but let go of the sadness. It is up to you to make a new life now.”

I stared at her. It was true; there was something inside me, something that Madame called strength, which held me up when I could not afford to fall. I nodded slowly.

“I am proud of you,” she whispered.

The boat blew an echoing hoot, and Madame hugged me closer and kissed my forehead for a long time. I forgot my strength, cried out, and clutched her skirts. But she loosened my hands gently and kissed me one more time. Then she turned away slowly and walked up the ramp onto the shore.

The boat began to move. The other children chattered excitedly and blew goodbye kisses to Warsaw. I was alone. Madame Engel stood erect on the dock and waved farewell, her dark eyes looking directly at mine.

“Mama!” I called. The name forced itself out of me. “Mama!”

1919–20

Although Mama climbed into Papa’s deathbed and pulled the covers tight, there was no more warmth to be found. I don’t remember the sun coming out once after that. Every day was cool, and I felt as if I were pushing through thick mist. Mama couldn’t push. She never stood up straight again, it seemed to me. She didn’t even prepare food for meals. Aunt Friedka moved into our house and took care of all of us.

Neighbors and friends came to visit each day for shiva, the traditional week of mourning. “We wish you long life,” they murmured. “Long life, wish you long life.”

Mama didn’t seem to hear. She sat in a low chair or on the floor. The visitors’ little children played outside with Nechama. Gradually the children’s chatter and laughter began to penetrate the dim house.

“Nechama! Shhhh!” I ordered furiously from the front doorstep. “Be quiet! How can you play when Papa is dead?”

There was silence for a moment, and then Nechama burst into loud tears. I felt torn. I was glad that Nechama realized she had done wrong, but I hated to see the little face twisted in sobs. Hurrying to my sister, I hugged and kissed her and dried her face with my apron. Then I settled the small children under an old cherry tree and told them all to play very quietly.

But when I went back inside, Mama was staring downward and didn’t seem to be aware of the commotion. A neighbor began to apologize for her children’s part in the games, but Aunt Friedka cut her short. “They’re still young,” she said. “It would be better for Devorah to be out there with them.”

How could she say such a thing? Of course it would be nice to run with the girls again, to be chased by the boys and shriek with laughter, but the time for such childishness was over. I sat down low next to Mama.

Exactly seven days after Papa was buried, visitors stopped coming. And so did the little gifts of food they had brought—two potatoes from one neighbor, a few strawberries and a bowl of milk from another. Aunt Friedka went out to barter for food every morning. She gave Nechama and me the biggest portions, but we felt hungry all the time. So did Aunt Friedka. Only Mama never complained.

Life went on somehow for a few months. Then came news of a pogrom in a Jewish shtetl to the west. Aunt Friedka whispered about it to our neighbors when she thought I wasn’t listening. “I heard some Cossacks rode in
and got all the Poles from the surrounding villages filled up with liquor. Strange bedfellows, Cossacks and Poles, but they get on well when it comes to killing Jews. Aagh, may the typhoid find its way to them!”

But the typhoid took a wrong turn. Mama woke up one morning burning with fever.

“Water,” she cried. “My lips are parched, bring me water.”

Aunt Friedka sprang up and examined Mama. I rushed to her, too. I could see small pink spots covering Mama’s thin back and chest.

“Water, Devorah. Quickly!” Aunt Friedka ordered.

I sped to the well and pumped as fast as I could, then stumbled back with the bucket, water spilling over my bare feet.

“I’m coming, Mama. Water’s coming,” I said, panting. That was the first of many trips. Mama drank and drank, clutching the cup with shaking fingers, but the thirst couldn’t be satisfied. Nechama was sent to a neighbor to keep her away from the fever, and Aunt Friedka tried to send me, too.

“No!” I declared. “I’m almost eleven; I’m old enough to look after my mama. I won’t go.”

“All right.” Aunt Friedka gave up, turning back to Mama’s bed. “I can use all the help I can get.”

In the end she really did need me, because the barber said he could not come to help; he was busy.

“Busy!” Aunt Friedka exploded. “That lying coward.
Why doesn’t he come straight out and say he’s too scared to come near the typhoid.”

Typhoid. It was the name of the terrible fever everyone feared. They said it could kill all the people in an entire village.

Aunt Friedka continued muttering. “Oh, he can take our money and treat us when we have the toothache or the gout, but when it’s something he could catch, he’s busy, is he? Devorah, build up the wood in that stove.”

After that, Aunt Friedka and I had no time to talk. Mama wanted to drink water constantly; she needed her swollen dry lips moistened every few minutes and a cool damp cloth placed on the pounding pain in her forehead. Her feet were cold; then she was burning and sweating. Then her feet were cold again. The blankets had to be tucked in, removed, replaced. I thought my heart would snap the first time I saw my mama’s legs. They were so thin, so bony and shrunken.

“But I can take care of her,” I whispered to myself. “I want to take care of you, Mama.”

Tears rolled hot and prickly as I ran to and from the well, but I didn’t put down the bucket to wipe them away. I wanted every minute with Mama.

I had only two days. Some of the time Mama slept, but mostly she tossed and turned and moaned for water. She said lots of things that didn’t make sense, and often she seemed to be speaking to her own mama, my grandmother, who was dead. On the second evening, Mama grew quiet,
and when I moistened her lips, she gave a weak smile and whispered something very faintly.

“What, Mama?” I asked, bending forward to listen.

The words were soft as a cat’s breath. “You’re a good girl, Devorahleh. Take care of Nechama. Say your prayers every night. Never forget who we are.”

I clung to her hand. “I’ll never forget, Mama. I promise,” I said, sobbing.

Then Mama whispered, “I’m going to Papa now. You stay with Nechama.”

“Don’t go, Mama!” I cried. “Mama! Mama! Don’t leave us.”

Mama’s eyes closed and her breathing became rough. I felt Aunt Friedka’s arms lifting me away, and I sobbed into her chest. There was a rattling sound from the bed. I turned back quickly, terrified of seeing the Angel of Death himself lifting my mother into the air. There was no angel. But my mama was dead.

1921

From Warsaw, the boat traveled down the Vistula River. I sat silently, staring at the riverbank. I glimpsed a tall woman pumping water vigorously at a well, and for a moment the woman was Aunt Friedka. I saw a man in a cart pulled by a horse. Papa? But the boat kept moving onward, and soon we were accosted by the shouts and smells of the huge and busy port of Danzig.

“Stay close to me,” Daddy Ochberg ordered. “This is no place to get lost. Children, hold hands tightly. Don’t let go!”

Two men carrying a heavy crate swore violently as an unbroken line of two hundred orphans with linked hands scuttled across their path. Another dockworker bent double to duck under our arms and hurried ahead, trailing an odor of sweat and garlic. The scream of steel grinding against steel hurt my ears.

“This way, this way.” Even Mr. Bobrow sounded nervous as he called to us. “Our boat is this way. Stay together.”

My fingers were sore from linking with Nechama’s so tightly. I had to keep looking down to avoid slipping in the garbage strewn on the wet dock. Isaac Ochberg was up ahead, talking to the captain of the small freighter he had chartered.

“On board!” he called out to us, relief in his voice. “Here’s our boat. Everyone on board.”

The next part of the journey took longer, but I can’t remember anything about it. There was no place to be but on the flat deck, and we sat or lay under a makeshift canopy of canvas, wrapped in all the clothes we owned. I felt sunk in heavy clay. I dozed and woke up to check that Nechama was nearby, then dozed again.

When I finally woke, my eyes opened to behold a scene finer than any dream. A gracious and glorious city was spread before our boat: bridges and towers, bells in belfries. There was a beautiful domed building that brought pleasure to my eyes, as Papa used to say, and a tall pillar supporting a statue of someone grand and proud. Blue glints shone like jewels among the feathers of strutting pigeons; the sun turned old blocks of stone to silver. Scrambling to my feet, I ran to the railing around the deck and stared and stared, drinking in the beauty.

Someone put an arm around my shoulders. It was
Daddy Ochberg. “I see you like London,” he whispered. “I love London, too, little one. We’ll wait here until a liner is ready to leave for South Africa.” Then he hurried on.

“London, London,” I repeated, softly so that the dream wouldn’t vanish. But it only grew richer.

“Is that the King’s palace?” Nechama asked me with wide eyes when our buses pulled up in front of a huge building with flags snapping in the wind. There were towers on either side, with ivy coloring the walls and framing hundreds of windows.

“No …” I answered uncertainly. “I heard Mr. Bobrow say the Jewish people of London have paid for us to stay in a hotel.”

A hotel. None of us had ever stayed in a hotel before. As we climbed down from the bus, a hush fell. The hotel had the strangest entrance I had ever seen. Framed in brass was a huge glass door that moved around in a circle. People were walking through it casually and disappearing. Then other people would appear in their place, walking around the circle in the opposite direction.

“Follow me,” urged Daddy Ochberg, and only because he was Daddy was I brave enough to shuffle through that door. “And out you step, quickly now,” Daddy warned as the door spun Nechama and me into the hotel lobby.

I had never dreamed of such a place, glittering with chandeliers and polished brass. The lobby was much bigger and even more beautiful than Madame Engel’s restaurant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nechama crouch down.
“Ooh, soft,” she was murmuring, stroking the thick red and gold carpeting.

“Nechama, stand up. You’re embarrassing me,” I told her.

There wasn’t time to linger in the lobby. A boy wearing a shiny uniform and a cap with a gold ribbon led us to a tiny mirrored room where a lady in a different uniform and white gloves stood next to a panel of buttons on the wall. As more and more children were squeezed into the small space, I hung back. But then Nechama stepped in without hesitation, so I had to follow. Suddenly the lady pulled a lever, the gold-barred door clanged shut, and the entire mirrored room began to shudder upward. My eyes opened wide with alarm. Nechama let out a cry. The boy in the uniform lifted his gloved hand too late to cover his grin; then the doors opened again and he led us out.

Somehow we had been transported to a completely different place, a long hallway lined with doors. The boy stopped at one of the doors, opened it with a big brass key, and pointed us into a room. It was almost completely filled with small beds. Immediately, Nechama scrambled onto one of the strange firm mattresses and began to jump up and down.