6. In the Potato Field
Slowly, Srulik learned to herd the animals. He began to understand the language of the sheep and the cows and to know what they were saying and what they wanted, what it meant when they suddenly shook their heads, and who was the lead ewe. Sometimes, when he was tired and the sun wasn't setting fast enough, he took her by the ear and led her home with the three other sheep trotting after her. The cows took one look and came too. As long as he didn't overdo it, the woman didn't mind. Once, though, he came home so early that she lost her temper and locked him out of the house. She brought him his supper to the sheep shed, a bowl of plain potatoes. He didn't do it again.
Sometimes he woke in the morning before she came to rouse him. Maybe it was the rooster that woke him, or else the sheep or the dogs, who came to play with him at dawn. Once, going to draw water from the well to wash with, he saw a man slip out of the house and run off into the forest.
He didn't ask who it was.
He kept looking at the girl with the two cows. Sometimes he caught her looking at him, too. Yet she never answered when he called to her. In the end, it was the dogs who introduced them. Srulik now took them regularly to the pasture, where he played with them and sometimes wrestled and romped with them in the grass. He could feel the girl watching these games with interest.
One day she seemed to be very busy. She kept changing places and lying down in the grass as though looking at something. Srulik wondered what she was up to. At noontime he saw her light a fire. Then she sat down to eat. She must have roasted potatoes in the coals, Srulik thought. Sniffing the air, the dogs ran to her. He called to them before they reached her and they ran back. But she called too and they turned around again. It became a game between her and Srulik. After a while, she called to him:
"Hey, Red, what do you have to eat?"
"Bread and cheese!" Srulik called back.
"I've got something better!"
"What?"
"Baked birds."
"Did you give some to the dogs?"
"Just the bones."
"Will you give me some?"
"Come on over."
But although he would have liked to, the cows headed for the neighbor's field the minute he left them. They were smarter than the sheep, who paid no attention and went on eating.
"I can't," he shouted. "The cows will get into the wheat."
The girl saw his predicament and came to him. With her she brought a few baked songbirds.
"How did you catch them?" he asked.
"Don't you know?"
"No."
"Would you like me to show you?"
"Yes."
"What will you give me?"
Srulik thought.
"I don't have anything," he said.
"What's your name?"
"Jurek."
"Mine is Marisza. Are you related to Pani Nowek?"
"No."
"Then why are you staying with her?"
"Her brother found me in the forest."
"What were you doing in the forest?"
"I was living there."
"Where are your father and mother?"
"They're dead," he said, feeling his heart twinge.
Were they? Was it all right to say that? Could it make them die if they hadn't yet? And what about his brothers and sisters? The thought of them made him sad. Marisza noticed.
"I know what it's like," she said. "My parents are dead, too. That's why I was sent to my aunt and uncle in the village. They send their children to school in town and I have to watch the cows. And at night they make me serve supper and wash the dishes, and their daughter sticks out her tongue at me. They don't even take me to church on Sunday. I have to pasture the cows then, too. Do you go to church?"
"No."
"Everyone except me has a bed to sleep in," Marisza went on.
"Where do you sleep?" Srulik asked.
"In the barn."
"I sleep in the sheep shed. When it's cold, I cuddle up with the sheep."
"My aunt and uncle don't have sheep. Just cows, pigs, and chickens. Come on, I'll teach you how to catch little birds and cook them."
"I know how to cook them," Srulik said. "I had a friend in the forest who hunted them with a slingshot."
"What happened to him?"
Srulik shrugged. "He's gone."
Marisza undid her braids and plucked two long hairs from them. Laying them on the ground, she tied a small loop at the end of them. Then she made a slipknot by passing them through the loop.
"See? You put a hair in the grass and tie the other end to a stem. Then you scatter crumbs. The birds are so dumb that they step into the loop. It tightens when they try to get away. You don't believe me? When we were little my big brother caught lots of birds like that—starlings, larks, finches, sparrows, birds I can't even name."