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Run, Boy, Run(50)

By:Uri Orlev


Jurek wiped away his tears. In bits and pieces he tried telling Pani Rappaport about the scenes flashing through his mind.

"You say the town was called Blonie? Would you recognize it?"

"Yes," he said. "I'd recognize our house and the bakery. There was a smithy next to it."

"Would you go with me there now?"

They went in the little pickup truck in which he had been kidnapped. The two of them squeezed into the cabin beside the driver. Pani Rappaport put her arm around him, but perhaps this was only because she had nowhere else to put it. Sitting so close to her gave Jurek a warm feeling. "You see," he joked, "there are good things about having only one arm."

She didn't laugh. She just gave him a big hug.

They crossed the Wisla. It took over an hour to reach Blonie. Little farms with thatched roofs stood on its outskirts. As they neared its center, these changed to low wood and brick houses. Suddenly Jurek shouted, "There's the bakery!"

The truck stopped. The door of the bakery was locked. Jurek ran to the smithy. No one was there, either. The place looked deserted. He grabbed Pani Rappaport's hand and pulled her after him. Soon they were standing in front of a half-destroyed house.

"This is where we lived," he said with a sinking heart.

He glanced across the street and his face lit up. "Pani Staniak's grocery is open!" he cried, pulling her after him again.

They entered the grocery. A middle-aged woman was standing behind the counter. She looked at Jurek wide-eyed and let out a cry.

"Srulik!"

Pani Staniak turned pale. She clutched at her heart and leaned against the counter.

"Srulik, you're alive?"

Now he remembered. Yes, his name was Srulik. Not Jurek Staniak.

Pani Staniak recovered, shut the store, and took the two of them home with her. She served them tea and cookies and they sat around the table.

"Your mother and your brother Duvid were shot on the road not far from here," she told Jurek.

"Do you know Srulik's family name?" Pani Rappaport asked.

"Of course. You might as well ask if I know my own name. It was Frydman. He doesn't remember it?"

"No. He goes by the name of Jurek Staniak."

Pani Staniak laughed.

"Who gave you that name?"

"Papa."

"He wanted you to have one you could remember. I knew the whole family well," she said to Pani Rappaport. "We were good neighbors. We were once invited to their Passover Seder and they came to see us celebrate our holidays. Srulik, don't you remember our Christmas tree?"

Srulik grinned. He remembered. The grin was for what happened when he came back from looking at the Christian tree with its little candles and stars. His parents weren't home, and his brother took a hammer and hit him on the head.

"Your big sister was Feyge. She escaped to Russia with your uncle when the war broke out. Your other sister was Malka. Your brothers were Yoysef and Duvid. You were little Srulik."

Pani Staniak smiled at him.

"What were the names of Srulik's parents?" Pani Rappaport inquired.

"His father was Hersh and his mother was Riva. She was a pretty woman."

Jurek tried picturing his mother again. He still couldn't do it. He could see his father more clearly. Not the haggard, stubbly face in the potato field, but his real one.

They said goodbye to Pani Staniak. She kissed Jurek and shook Pani Rappaport's hand. On their way to the truck, Pani Rappaport hugged him and said, "Now we'll look for your sister Feyge."

"All right," he said. "But I want to go on being Jurek."

"Then you will be," she promised.

On the return trip to Warsaw, Jurek was preoccupied with his thoughts. More and more memories kept occurring. Of someone swinging a chicken above his head. Of cleaning the house for a holiday and taking out all the mattresses and filling them with new straw. He remembered where each bed had stood, the one he shared with Duvid too. He remembered the corner for washing—or was he thinking of the Kowalskis'? He remembered the bucket that stood on the porch on winter nights, so that they needn't go all the way to the wooden outhouse. He remembered his grandfather taking him to the stuttering hatter and buying him a hat with a button on top. He could picture the pantry with its double doors and the drawers beneath them, in one of which his mother kept the cakes she baked. The memories kept coming, as though in a strange dream.

"Jurek, wake up."

His mother was bending over him. He knew it was a dream and that the voice was Pani Rappaport's. And yet it was his mother, too, her face as clear as if she were standing there. He did everything not to let go of her. He would never forget her again.

"We're here," Pani Rappaport said.