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Run, Boy, Run(44)

By:Uri Orlev


Jan joined them, and they all splashed together to the pigsty. Everyone grabbed a piglet or two and brought it to the farmhouse. Oinking angrily, the mother sow trotted after them and ran into the house on their heels. Pan Cherka slammed the door. Water trickled through the cracks between the planks.

"Everyone up to the attic!" he ordered.

First they carried the piglets. Then they tried pushing the sow up the stairs. She balked and wouldn't move.

"Leave her alone," Pan Cherka said. "Bring up the furniture. She'll come by herself when the water gets high."

"What about the horses and cows?" Jurek asked Jan.

"When they have to, they'll swim. If they can find some high ground and keep from drowning, they'll come back. And don't ask so many questions, because Pan Cherka is going to smack you."

They began carrying things to the attic.

A gray, foggy morning found the sow floating in the downstairs room, half-propped on the stairs. The water had reached the windows. As soon as there was enough light to see, Jan and Pan Cherka pulled the sow up the stairs while Pani Cherka, Christina, and Jurek held her squealing piglets in the air to entice her. She oinked back at them and let herself be hauled to the safety of the attic.

The view from the attic window was like none Jurek had seen. Only the top branches of the trees in the nearby woods were visible. Nothing remained of the houses but the roofs. The neighbors were worse off then the Cherkas. They sat on their roofs, clinging to the chimneys. Some held babies or piglets. The rain kept coming down.

In the afternoon, a rescue team of Polish soldiers arrived in rubber boats. Jurek was excited to see soldiers in Polish uniforms. For the first time he really believed the war was over. The soldiers helped the villagers down from the roofs. In the end, a boat reached their attic.

"We're staying here," Pan Cherka told the soldiers through the attic window. "Just take the boy. He's not ours and I don't want to be responsible for him."

He picked Jurek up and passed him through the window to a soldier.

The soldier squeezed Jurek into the crowded boat between babies and piglets. They cast off from the house. Jurek turned to say goodbye to the Cherkas. Christina stuck her head through the window and waved.

They motored over the vast flood, past inundated villages and treetops. No one spoke. Everyone had his own worries and tried not to move to keep the boat from tipping and filling with water. They headed for a section of the Wisla where the levees had held and moored in a little harbor. A soldier tied the boat, and they climbed carefully out of it onto a wet wooden dock. The soldiers took them to a church.

"Where are your parents?" a soldier asked Jurek.

"I don't have any."

"I have orders to bring all the orphans to a children's home."

Jurek shrugged.

"Wait here," the soldier said. "Maybe there are others."

Jurek was gone by the time the soldier returned. He wanted a real home, not an orphanage.

He was in Warsaw. It was a large city with apartment buildings and shops in its center and country houses and small farms on its outskirts. Jurek headed for the outskirts. Everywhere he saw burned-out ruins and blackened trees with broken branches. A charred tank lay in a ditch. In a suburb called Wawer he came to a small farm, entered the yard, and looked around. There were some auxiliary buildings and a wagon. A large oak tree spread its bare branches over the thatched roof of the farmhouse. Jurek liked the place and knocked. A middle-aged man opened the door. Jurek couldn't tell from the looks of him if he was a farmer, a hired hand, or some sort of tradesman.

"Blessed be Jesus Christ," he said.

"Forever and ever, amen," the man answered.

Jurek glanced inside. There was a large room with a big bed. A kerosene lamp stood on a table. By the lit stove a woman sat knitting. She looked up at Jurek without stopping her work. A boy his age was eating at the table.

"Are you one of the flood victims?" the man asked.

"Yes," Jurek said.

"Come in. I'll give you something to eat."

Jurek sat by the boy. The man brought him a plate of food. Jurek began to eat. Exhausted from his sleepless night, he felt his eyes beginning to shut.

"The boy needs to sleep," the woman said.

She rose, took a blanket from the closet, handed it to Jurek, and told her son, "Tadek, take the lamp and show the boy to the barn."

"And don't start any fires," his father said. "And come back right away, do you hear?"

Tadek took the lamp from the table and led Jurek to the barn. It was a small barn with only four cows. There was no hayrack. Tadek shone the light on a corner with some straw. Jurek spread his blanket. He was asleep before Tadek returned to the house.