Uri said, “Doctor Korczak, here is bread for the orphans.”
The man looked at us. He was bald. The hair that was not on the top of his head seemed to have fallen to the bottom of his face, as he had a dense white mustache and a goatee like a broom. He smiled and nodded. “Thank you,” he said. I peered into the dimness behind him, trying to catch sight of an orphan, but he was closing the door.
I had an idea. The next day I snatched two loaves of bread. One I gave to Uri, the other I took to the house of Janina the girl. It had snowed overnight. Brown stubble poked through the white blanket covering the garden. I pushed the snow from the top step. I set the loaf down, knocked on the door, and ran.
The next day I came back to look. The bread was gone.
That was how it started.
10
From then on I tried to snatch two loaves each day. I would save one for Uri and me and leave the other on the back step of Janina’s house. One time I looked up and saw her staring at me from the back window. She smiled. I smiled.
I began to find things on the step where I left the bread. I found a gumdrop and a candy cigarette and a fancy button. I always looked at the window, but she was never there again.
One day I left the bread and picked up a little black-and-white glass dog no bigger than my thumbnail. I was fascinated. I walked off, staring at the tiny dog, turning it over in my fingers. I was almost home—we were living in a stable loft then—when suddenly I turned and ran back to the house. It was in my mind to pound on the door, to make her come out so I could say something to her.
When I got there, someone was at the step. A boy. He turned and saw me. He stuffed the bread into his coat and ran. I ran after him, shouting, “Stop! Thief!” I caught up to him. I grabbed his long black coat, but he kept on running. He was a shoulder and head taller than me. I was his tail. I tripped and let go.
I ran after him again. We dodged in and out of people. They did not seem to notice us. Suddenly he turned. I ran into his fist. Next thing I knew I was in the gutter.
Pinpricks of frozen rain were falling. There was something hard in my mouth. I spit it out. It was a tooth. I reached into my pocket. The glass dog was smashed.
At home Uri’s eyes bulged when he saw me. “What happened to you?”
I told him.
“You’re too little to fight,” he said. “You don’t fight. You run.”
He cleaned me up. He wiped blood from my face and ears and neck. When he touched my face, it hurt. He kept muttering, “Stupid . . . stupid . . .”
Next time I wasn’t stupid. I went at night. There was no one on the streets. I wondered where the people were. The streetlights were like moons cupped in iron fingers.
Behind Janina’s house there was no light at all. I ran my hand across the step. I felt something. I put it in my pocket. I put the bread on the step. I looked up at the window, but it was even darker than the night. Somewhere in the house Janina was sleeping. I waved at the dark, empty window and went away.
Back on the street, I heard a shout. I turned. Someone stood up the street, in shadow. He stepped into the light. I heard a pop, saw a flash, felt a tug on my ear. I reached up. I couldn’t feel my earlobe. Someone was shooting at me! I ducked into the nearest air shaft and made my way home along the alleyways.
My ear hurt. I cried. Uri came to me. When I told him what had happened, he flicked his cigarette lighter to see. He smacked me and stuffed a rag against my ear. “Stupid . . . stupid . . .”
“I can’t find my earlobe,” I told him.
“They shot it off,” he said.
“Who?”
“The Jackboots, who do you think?”
“Why did the Jackboots shoot my ear?”
“Because of the curfew.”
“What’s the curfew,” I said.
He turned off the cigarette lighter. He was a voice in the black. “Curfew means all Jews off the streets after dark.”
“But I’m not a Jew.”
“If they shoot at you, you’re a Jew. I told you not to go out at night. You don’t listen.” He flicked on the lighter, smacked me again, and flicked off the lighter.
It was true. He had told me. It was also true that I didn’t listen. I had sneaked out while he slept. To show him I understood, I smacked myself.
Before I went to sleep I remembered my pocket. I pulled out the thing I had found on Janina’s step. Feeling it, I could tell it was a hair bow. I guessed it was red, the one she had worn on her birthday. I put it in a bread bag, where I kept all the things she left on the step.
The next day Uri tied a rope around my wrist. “Teach you a lesson,” he said. We went off to meet the boys.
We met them in a cemetery. They laughed when they saw me.
“He’s on a leash!”
“Bowwow!”
“Toss him a bone!”
“Look—he was in a fight with another dog. It bit his ear off!”
“Let him alone,” Uri said.
“Let me alone,” I said. “I have seven brothers and five sisters.”
They laughed even louder, but they left me alone.
There was smoke-blowing Ferdi and Olek with one arm and grim-faced Enos and the rest of them, but there was no pile of treasures anymore and there were no cigars and no one threw food about. But there were cigarettes—Ferdi pulled a handful from his pocket—and everyone lit up, even me. It was my first cigarette.
“He’s smoking!” exclaimed Kuba, who was a clown.
“He’ll stunt his growth!”
“How can he? He’s already smaller than a cockroach!”
And then Kuba the clown charged into one-armed Olek. The two of them wrestled, but it was no match. Olek was much better with two legs than Kuba with two arms. Olek had Kuba wrapped like an octopus, Kuba squealing and flailing. Kuba grabbed Ferdi’s leg and bit it. Ferdi screamed, and in a moment everyone but Uri and grim-faced Enos was on the ground, even me with my leash. We laughed and bit and wrestled, and I think we must have looked like one squirming creature with many heads, arms, and legs.
At last we peeled apart and flopped to the ground, exhausted and laughing. My ear was bleeding again and hurting. I pressed a fistful of dry grass to it.
Except for Kuba, we sat on the ground and talked and laughed and smoked our cigarettes. But that didn’t last long, as the frozen ground was even colder than the air. One by one we stood. We milled about. We bumped into each other and grappled. We made a game of giving and receiving bear hugs. To see who is strongest, we said, but I think it was to be close. In the cemetery our bodies were the only fires.
Some of us played hide-and-seek among the tombstones. I was It, and when I went seeking I came upon a tombstone such as I had never seen before. Rising up from a great block of stone was a man with wings. He was looking at the sky, as if he might fly off at any moment. I couldn’t take my eyes away.
“Hey, Gypsy,” came a voice, “come on, we’re hiding.”
But I just stood there staring up at the great stone man with wings. Soon others were standing by.
“Who is he?” I said.
“It’s an angel,” said Ferdi.
“What’s an angel?” I said.
Grim-faced Enos said, “There are no angels.”
I looked at him. I pointed to the man with wings. “So what is that?”
“Just stone,” he said. “It’s not real. It’s something Jackboots believe.”
“I believe,” said Olek. He scratched the stump of his missing arm. “There are angels. You just can’t see them.”
“Why not?” I said. “Are they hiding?”
“They’re invisible.”
I looked around. I had to agree: if they were there, they were invisible all right. Which made it especially good to have a stone statue of one. At least I could see that.
“What do they do?” I said.
“They don’t do horseflop,” said Enos.
“They help people,” said Olek. “When you’re in
trouble, they help you out of it.”
Enos snorted. He ground out his cigarette on the foot of the stone angel. “Where were they when you got pushed to the tracks and the train ran over your arm?” He grabbed the empty sleeve of Olek’s missing arm and flapped it in his face. “Where were your angels then? Why didn’t they roll you off the tracks? Why didn’t they stop the train?” He pointed at a boy called Big Henryk. His shoes were bank coin bags. “Look at him. Why don’t the angels give him shoes? Or brains to want them? And him”—jabbing his finger at Jon, who was thin and gray and never spoke—“look at him. He’s dying and he doesn’t even know it!” Enos was shouting now. “What are your angels doing for him?” He spit on the stone angel.
All was silent . . . until the cry “Jews!” came skimming over the tombstones.
We turned to look. A black wagon was coming down the path. The lumbering horse wore a black shawl over its mane. A line of people, black-shawled and lumbering like the horse, followed the wagon. It was a small wagon, a cart, just big enough to hold the coffin.
A man was shaking his fist. “Jews! Hooligan Jew-boys filthing up the cemetery!”
Several of the men left the line and headed toward us, shouting. We flung our cigarettes and ran. My leash flapped wildly, slapping tombstones. Suddenly Kuba stopped. He turned his back to the men, dropped his pants, and bent over and gave them a good, long look. The running men shouted louder, but no louder than we laughed.
In the stable that night, in the straw-smelling darkness, I said to Uri, “Is Enos right? There are no angels?” There was no answer. “Are you sleeping?”
“I’m trying to,” came his voice. “Your silly questions. How do I know? Enos is whatever you want him to be. You want him to be right?”
“No,” I said. “I want him to be wrong.”
“Fine. He’s wrong.”
“I want to believe in angels. I think.”
“Fine. Believe.”
“But Enos says angels are for Jackboots.”
“You’re a jackass, that’s what you are. And a silly one.”
“You don’t say I’m stupid anymore. Now I’m silly.”
“Take your pick.”
“But I’m not a Jackboot. How can I believe in angels?”
“When you’re nothing, you’re free to believe anything. Go to sleep, Misha.”
I tried to go to sleep, but a question kept nagging me.
“Uri?”
He snarled, “What?”
“Do you believe in angels?”
“I believe in bread,” he said. “Now shut up or I’ll come over there.”
I shut up.
11
As if heeding Uri’s words, bread soon became something more to believe in than to eat.
One day I went to my usual spots. Street corners near bakeries—these were the best. I waited at the first. No one came along with a bread bag. In fact, no one even came out of the bakery. I went to the next spot. Same thing. All day I went from corner to corner. Nothing. Not a single loaf of bread did I see.
I did something I almost never did—I entered a bakery. It was a bakery with a yellow star painted on the window. I was shocked. On the shelves against the wall there was no bread at all, only a single, sad round roll. Behind the glass in the case were two or three cupcakes.
The baker came from the back room. “You want to buy something?” he growled.
I stared at the roll. It was better than nothing. But it was too high for me to reach. My speed and quickness were useless.
I showed him my yellow stone. “Trade?” I said. I would not have given it to him. I just wanted to trick him into taking down the roll.
His face turned red. He jabbed at the door. “Out! Get out of here, you little thief!” He reached for me, but I was gone.
Back in the stable I said to Uri, “There’s no more bread.”
“Learn to eat pickles,” he said.
I did. I learned to eat a lot of things. If there was no food on the streets, under the arms of the ladies in the fox-face furs, I went to the shops. If the shelves of the shops were bare, I went to the homes. There was always food in the homes, especially the large, fine houses, the houses that the ladies of the fox-face furs went back to.
I had to be patient. It was hard to find an unlocked door. I learned to look for little children playing outside a large, fine house. When they went back inside, they often forgot to lock the door. In I walked, sometimes right behind the child. Some children looked back at me and said, “Who are you?” “Misha Pilsudski,” I said. Some children said nothing. They seemed to think that if I strolled in the door with them, I must belong.
I walked straight to the dining room or the kitchen. What happened then depended on who and where the people were. If there were only children, I might say, “Where are the cookies?” or “Where is the candy?” If there were grown-ups about, I grabbed the first thing I saw and ran. If there was no one or a very young child, I would take my time shopping in the kitchen.
One time I entered a house through an unlocked back door. I heard voices and laughter. I moved through the kitchen and suddenly found myself standing in a doorway, staring at a family of people having dinner around a long table. Food and silver and glass sparkled everywhere. In the middle was a great, golden roasted bird, perhaps a goose or turkey. I must have surprised them, for all movement stopped as they stared at me while I stared at the table—but not for long. As always, I was the first to move. I believe this was the first rule of life that I learned, though it was a twitch in my muscles rather than a thought in my head: Always be the first to move. As long as that happened, they would have to catch up, and I could not be caught.
I snatched the bird by the leg and bolted from the back door before they were out of their seats.
Of course, I could not do this more than once at any one house, but there were many large, fine houses in Warsaw.
Uri tied me to his own wrist when we went to sleep, so I could not deliver food to Janina in the night. During the day I left things on the back step—a jar of jam, a drumstick—but I could never be sure they were not stolen.
When the bread started to go, so did the trees.
I heard them going early one morning. I felt the night leash tug on my wrist. I joined Uri at the window of the loft. Outside, men were standing knee-deep in snow, chopping down trees.
“Why are they chopping trees?” I said.
“Firewood,” he said. “People are running out of coal. They’re cold.”
Wherever we went looking for food, we heard the sounds of hatchets and saws. And trees. Some trees fell with an almost silent whump into the pillow of snow. Some gave a groan. Some shrieked in protest. One, a thick, burly monster of a tree with warts, came down with a high, thin wail that sounded exactly like a baby crying.
Soon the parks were nothing but dry grass and stumps.
One day Uri went off by himself and came back with a sack of coal. “Black pearls,” he said. He took the black pearls to Doctor Korczak, to keep the orphans warm.
The next day I too went searching for black pearls. I scrounged deep into the rubble of collapsed buildings, tunneling for coal bins. I found a piece here, a piece there, but it was mostly coal dust. When my sack was finally full, I marched to the orphanage and rapped with the brass knocker.
An orphan boy came to the door. His mouth dropped open, his eyes bulged when he saw me. I blurted, “I’m not an orphan! I have seven brothers and five sisters!” I held out the sack. He ran.
In a moment Doctor Korczak appeared. Again I held out the sack. “Black pearls,” I said. “Keep you warm.”
His great white mustache stretched in both directions, and he laughed. “You”—he pointed at me—“are the black pearl.” He disappeared from the doorway. He returned with a mirror. “Look.”
A face black as coal itself stared back at me. I never knew eyes were so white. I looked at the rest of me, my hands, my clothes. I was a walking lump of coal. “I’m black,”
I said.
He laughed again. “Not for long.” He took the sack of coal and led me into the house.
He waved his arm. “Welcome to our wonderful home.”
Soon I was in something called a bathtub and a lady on her knees was scrubbing me with a brush and soap, and as I became white again and my stone became yellow again, the water became as black as Jackboots.
In distant rooms I heard laughter and the sound of running feet. I felt orphan eyes on me, but I could not see anyone.
Doctor Korczak brought me new clothes, the second person ever to do that. As I put them on, he said, “So, little sack of warmth, I think you are a Gypsy. Am I right?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I used to be stupid, but now I’m silly.”
He laughed. He laughed a lot. “Who told you that?”
“Uri,” I said. “Uri is my friend. Do you believe in angels?”
He stopped laughing. He stared at me. “Yes, I do believe in angels.”
“So do I,” I said, deciding once and for all. “Uri believes in bread.”
He nodded. “Yes, I believe in bread too.” He was always smiling. His mustache made it seem a double smile. “What is your name, little man?”
“Misha Pilsudski,” I said proudly.
His eyebrows went up. “Ah! Yes.” He nodded and closed his eyes. He’s heard of me, I thought. “Misha Pilsudski . . .” He seemed to be tasting my name. “Tell me, Misha Pilsudski, where do you live?”
“In the stable,” I said. “With Uri. But the horses are gone.”
“And tell me, do you happen to be an orphan, Misha Pilsudski?”
I loved his goatee even more than his mustache. It was so soft and white. I wanted to rub my face in it. I wanted to climb inside it and live there and peek out. I think he wanted me to be an orphan very badly. I hated to disappoint him. “Oh no,” I said. “I have seven brothers and five sisters. And a mother and father and a great-great-grandmother who’s one hundred and nine years old and a horse named Greta if I can ever find her.” I told him how we had been bombed by Jackboots and the whole story.