"Run, boy!" she said. "Run!"
5. Alone in the Forest
Srulik returned to the forest. It seemed happy to have him back. Although it was the same forest he had left that morning, it was also a different one. It was his and Yosele's forest that protected and saved them. For the first time, Srulik felt love for it. He walked deeper and deeper into it until he came to a dark, entangled hiding place.
In the following weeks, he slept in trees and learned to climb them like a monkey. He clambered up them and leaped from tree to tree by swinging on the branches. His shoes had fallen apart long ago. The soles of his feet grew so tough that he could run on anything without feeling pain. He learned to move as stealthily as the forest animals and to treat infected scratches from bushes and vines by lancing them with a pine needle, squeezing out the pus, and disinfecting them with his own urine.
In daytime, he rarely thought of his friends or felt lonely. He was too busy looking for food and water and observing everything around him. He was fascinated by every animal and bird, by every sound that he heard and movement that he saw.
Yet at night, when he crawled into a tree, all kinds of thoughts ran through his mind. Of Yosele. Of Yankel. Of his mother. Even of Yoyneh the shoemaker. Sometimes he woke in a fright, startled by the cry of an animal or night bird.
He stopped counting the days. He lived from minute to minute, hour to hour, morning to evening. He drank rainwater from puddles and ate berries. While roaming in the forest one day, he came to a brook like the one his gang of boys had camped by. From then on he returned to it every evening, guiding himself by the moss on the trees.
He didn't have a slingshot, but he did have a good throwing arm. He took some smooth stones from the bottom of the brook, whittled a thick stick with his piece of glass, found a small clearing in the forest, and sat waiting in perfect stillness against the trunk of a tree. At first little animals appeared, darting in and out of sight. Although he didn't believe he could hit any of them with a stone, it was fun to watch them. Sometimes a chipmunk stopped to look at him anxiously, sniffing at him from a distance before it disappeared. After a while a doe came along with her fawn. He sat motionless while she stared at him, trying to guess what sort of creature he was. Then, with a single bound so quick it was almost invisible, they were gone. He went on sitting there. The noise of something large shuffling through the undergrowth told him wild boar were approaching. Soon a couple appeared with its piglets. They looked like the village pigs but were furry and had long, scary tusks. Srulik scrambled into a tree without waiting to see if they noticed him.
He had climbed down and returned to his place when a hedgehog entered the clearing. Srulik fell upon it with his stick. The hedgehog rolled itself into a ball, its quills bristling. Srulik thrust his stick against the round form and pressed with all his might until it ceased to stir. Then he turned it over and slit its belly with his piece of glass. At night he lit a fire and singed the hedgehog over it. This made it easier to cut away the skin and quills. He carved chunks of meat and roasted them on a spit.
A few days went by before he succeeded again. This time he killed a squirrel with a stone. He cut off its head, skinned and cleaned it, and rinsed it in the brook. Then, too hungry to wait, he ate it raw. He was no longer sure he wouldn't eat snails like Yosele.
***
"What are you doing here, boy?"
Srulik gave a start. He hadn't heard a human voice in a long while. It was the forester. Srulik recognized him. He just didn't recognize Srulik.
"Picking berries," Srulik said.
"I can see that."
The man regarded him. He was barefoot like a farm boy and dressed in rags like a homeless orphan.
"Where are your parents?"
"I don't have any."
"Where are you from?"
Srulik shrugged.
"Are you a Jew?"
"No."
"What's your name?"
"Jurek."
"What's your family's name?"
"I don't know."
The man took a minute to digest this. Then he said, "My sister is looking for a boy to take the cows and sheep to pasture."
Srulik didn't know what to say. He remembered being locked in the bottle room. But he missed human contact. The man smiled at him. It looked like a smile he could trust. It was hard to believe he was someone who turned Jewish boys in to the Germans.
"Look, son. When autumn comes, you'll die of hunger and cold. My sister's farm is outside the village. You'll be safe there."
Srulik wanted to say that he was safe here too, but he didn't. He could tell the man knew he was Jewish. And yet he was asking him nicely. He could just as well have taken him prisoner by surprise.