He fell asleep before hearing the shots, but they echoed in his dreams all night long. He kept running and running without looking back, the real face of his father in front of him.
7. She's Going to Cook Me
Autumn came. The forest had a new look. The tree leaves turned yellow and began to fall. It grew harder to find berries to eat. He could still climb the trees for walnuts, but their shells were hard and had to be cracked with a stone. There were more and more mushrooms. He didn't recognize most of them and ate only the ones he knew from Blonie. The nice days were fewer. He was wet most of the time. Sometimes, as dusk approached, he slipped from the forest to steal food from a village. But the farmers, perhaps because of the approaching winter, now kept nearly everything under lock and key. Often, when he woke in the morning, the puddles of rainwater had a thin layer of ice. It was hard to pull the last carrots and radishes in the vegetable gardens from the frozen earth. The tomatoes and cucumbers were long gone. He was hungry and freezing.
Skirting a village one day, he saw an elderly farmer chopping wood, his jacket hanging on a fence post. After a while, the farmer put down his ax and entered his house. Srulik grabbed the jacket and ran. It was made of thick wool and had a lining. He shortened the sleeves with his piece of glass, found some rope, picked it apart, and tied the pieces of sleeve to his feet with the strands.
Sometimes he tried making a fire with Marisza's magnifying glass. It rarely worked. Either the sun didn't stay out long enough, or else it was too wet.
One night it began to snow. It was still snowing in the morning. Shivering from the cold, Srulik left the forest and went to look for work. It snowed all day. He plodded through the snow for hours until toward evening he reached a village half buried beneath a white blanket. A cold wind was blowing. There wasn't a soul in sight, not even a dog. Snow covered the houses, the thatch roofs, the bare treetops, the empty wagons in the farmyards, the wells and the fences. Narrow paths had been cleared by the doors of the houses. Srulik walked in the tracks of footprints that ran through the village. A pale light shone in some windows. He entered a farmyard, went to the hayloft, and fell asleep bundled in his jacket. His sleep was fitful. Now and then he awoke, shivering and feverish. He dreamed that he and his mother were in the clutches of the Gestapo. A stranger was pretending to be his father. He awoke in a fright. I'm sick, he thought. Always go to the poor people, Srulik, they're more willing to help. Yes, Papa.
When he opened his eyes in the morning, he didn't know where he was. His head hurt. He tried getting up and fell down. He crawled through the darkness toward the light from the door and pulled himself to his feet by leaning against the wall. The weather was gray and wintry. The farmyard didn't look especially poor. Although he wanted to knock on the door, he moved on.
It wasn't far from one farmhouse to the next. Yet the distances seemed far greater than usual. Every step felt like his last. He had to force himself to pull his foot out of the snow and take another stride. His only desire was to lie down. Suddenly everything vanished and he saw only the gray sky. You have to stay alive, Srulik. Yes, Papa. He must have fallen. Mustering his will, he picked himself up. In front of him was a house with an old ruin next to it and a fence around part of a yard. These must be poor people, he thought. His vision grew blurred. He was seeing double. Rubbing his eyes, he made a supreme effort to climb the steps to the door. He knocked. And again. After a while, the door opened just a crack. Through the crack he made out a woman's face. She was the prettiest woman he had ever seen. Then everything went blank.
When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on a soft mattress. The pretty woman, who seemed to belong to some dream, was leaning over him. Above her was the ceiling of a house. Slowly he realized she was not a dream but the person who had opened the door. She was looking at him anxiously.
"You're awake?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The woman went over to a large pot on the fire. She's going to cook me and eat me, he thought.
She lifted the pot and poured hot water into a wooden tub. Then she undressed him and examined him. What will she do to me now? he thought helplessly. Shaking her head, she examined his sores and put him in the tub. The water was very hot and he yelled. She scrubbed him thoroughly without sparing the soap. Then she took him from the tub, dried him, laid him in front of the stove, and smeared his body with a black salve. His sores hurt. He moaned and groaned.
The woman went off for a while. When she came back she moved his mattress closer to the stove and added wood to the fire.
Now she'll throw me into it, Srulik thought.
But she merely covered him with a blanket. Though his whole body was smarting, he fell asleep with a hopeful feeling.