by Chaim Potok
I became ill that night in my bed and vomited and my mother changed my nightgown and my sheets and held me and sang me to sleep with a lullaby in Yiddish. I was running a high fever and later in the night had a dream. There was a sudden rustling noise and I looked and Baba Yaga was in the sycamore tree outside my window, peering at me through the branches, green-visaged, monstrous. A shock of terror pierced me. I found you, dear child, she said. Now you will go with Baba Yaga. Abruptly she sprang from the tree through my window and stood at the foot of my bed, laughing hideously, her mouth huge and black, her eyes red and burning. I was paralyzed with terror and could not scream. I felt myself wanting to scream, tried to push the scream from my throat, but my throat was tight, nothing would come from it. She moved toward me, a vile stench rising from her. How loathsome and grotesque she was! She stood beside me and reached out. I felt her touch my face. Icy cold and burning and an image of dead things floating in the green scum of a river’s edge. I screamed and woke. My mother was immediately in my room. I cried and shivered. She held me and remained with me until I fell back asleep. In the morning the fever was gone but I lay shivering and my mother stayed with me all that day, nursing me as Aunt Sarah had once nursed her and my father. That night my temperature was still normal, and the next morning I returned to school.
I felt weak all that day. The weather was alternately cloudy and sunny, the air suddenly cold each time clouds slid across the sun. The cold prickled my skin and I would find myself shivering. On the way home from school I went past the yeshiva but saw no one I knew in the front yard. My mother was at her work in Manhattan. I let myself into the apartment and stood near the door a moment, listening to the harp. In the kitchen I had a glass of milk and some cookies, then wandered listlessly through the rooms and hallway. From the window in the spare bedroom I saw cats playing among the garbage cans in the cellarway. I thought of Aunt Sarah and wondered where she was. Had she come back from Spain? What did she do in her work as a missionary: nurse sick people to health and ask them to believe in Jesus Christ? Did she ask them to get down on their knees with her? I remembered myself on my knees in this room. It seemed an awkward position for prayer—and yet strangely comforting in a way I could not understand. On your knees with your hands together. I felt myself sliding to my knees and raising my hands. I knelt at the window a foot or so from the bed in which Aunt Sarah had slept. I didn’t know what to say or to whom to say it. Finally I said, “Please protect my father and my Uncle Jakob. Please. Please. My name is Ilana Davita Chandal. Please protect them. I love them very much.”
I got to my feet, feeling cold. The apartment was warm but my feet and the tips of my fingers were icy. I went out of the spare bedroom and walked slowly through the hallway to my parents’ bedroom. From the window I saw that someone had suspended a bird feeder from a branch of the sycamore. Birds perched on the feeder and fluttered about it, pecking at the seeds. It seemed far enough away from the branch to prevent a cat from getting at the birds. The earth of the garden bed lay scraped and naked to the sky. In the east the sky had begun to empty of color. I walked back slowly through the dim hallway. Entering my room, I heard, echoing through the silence that lay heavily upon the house, the clear loud click of the lock on the downstairs hallway door. Someone was quickly climbing the stairs. I went to the door and opened it and saw Mr. Dinn come onto our landing.
He wore a dark spring coat, a dark suit, and a dark felt hat, and he carried in his hand a copy of The New York Times. He seemed startled by my appearance at the door.
“Hello, llana. Is your mother home?”
I stared at him and said my mother was in Manhattan and would be home soon.
“I was on my way back from the office and thought your mother might be home,” he said, trying to make it sound light and matter-of-fact. Then he said, “How are you feeling? Are you over your fever?”
I told him I was feeling fine, and wondered who had told him I had been ill.
“Please tell your mother I was here,” he said. “Ask her to call me.”
I watched him start back down the stairs, a tall thin man, walking straight and stiff, and had a sudden image of the way my father used to sit slouched against the back of a chair with one foot draped across its arm. At the foot of the stairs Mr. Dinn turned and went through the hallway to the Helfman apartment. I heard him knock, heard the door open, heard Mrs. Helfman’s voice. I went back into the apartment. The wooden balls of the door harp pinged softly upon the taut wires.
A while later, from the window of my room, I saw my mother walking up the street. What a sweet and lovely sensation that was each time, watching my mother moving toward the house and toward me! I heard the lock click shut. I waited but did not hear my mother’s footsteps. I waited a while longer and went to the door and opened it. I heard my mother and Mrs. Helfman talking together quietly in the downstairs hallway. Then my mother started up the stairs. I came out onto the landing and she saw me. She looked very pale.
“Mama, Mr. Dinn was here and asked you to call him.”
“I know, darling. Mrs. Helfman told me.”
“What’s the matter, Mama?”
“Let me come inside and close the door. There was a very bad bombing near Bilbao yesterday and Mr. Dinn wanted to know if your father was all right.”
She removed her light coat and her beret and placed them in the closet.
“Is Papa all right?”
“If anything had happened, the paper would have called us. I’ll phone Mr. Dinn. Then I’ll make us something to eat. I’m sorry I’m so late today. The office was jammed. I have to go out later and teach my English class. I’ll call the paper in the morning. Come inside the kitchen, Ilana, and help me with supper. First, let me call Mr. Dinn.”
Her voice sounded strange. I watched her go along the hallway to the telephone on the stand between the kitchen and her bedroom.
During supper we heard a radio news broadcast about a bombing raid by rebel aircraft against a small unprotected town in northern Spain.
“Fascist barbarians,” my mother said venomously. “Like the Cossacks. Barbarians!”
“Mr. Dinn could have trusted me to remember to tell you. I’m not a child.”
“He was being very kind, Ilana. He wanted to make sure.”
“He doesn’t trust me because I’m a girl. David is the same way. They think I have no brains.”
“It’s very difficult for me to imagine anyone thinking that you have no brains. What’s troubling you, Ilana?”
“I’m afraid about Papa,” I said, after a pause.
“I’m sure your father is fine,” my mother said. “He’s taking good care of himself these days. Will you do the dishes, please? I must run to my class.”
I cleaned up the kitchen and turned off the light. The apartment was dim and still, deep shadows hovering in the hallway and in the corners near the door. I wandered into my parents’ bedroom and stood near my father’s desk. Suddenly I had a sharp image of him sitting there working at his special writing, brown wavy hair, pale blue eyes, ruddy complexion, a genial man working for a better world for everyone. Why did he run around so much? Why did my parents care so much? No one else’s parents seemed to care much about the world. Mr. and Mrs. Helfman didn’t seem to care about the world; nor did the students in my public school class and their parents. Mr. Dinn cared a little about the world; he helped people who were in trouble over immigration laws. But most people had jobs and came home at night and played with their children. How could a single event like what happened in Centralia change a person so much? And what had changed my mother from an observant Jew to a Communist? I could not imagine events that would so change an individual.
The image of my father faded and was gone.
I went to my room, undressed, and got into bed. I fell asleep reading the book about Rabbi Akiva and his students and the plague and the revolt against Rome.
Through my sleep I heard someone enter my room and come quietly over to my bed.
I didn’t know who it was and found I could not wake. I sensed the warmth of someone standing next to me and heard soft slow breathing. Then I felt a warm, moist kiss on my cheek, felt the dark sadness of the silent presence that was leaning over me, felt it clearly through my sleep but was still unable to wake. Then strange and musical words were said but I could not understand what they meant. Then whoever it was drew away from me and stood silent for a long moment and turned and went softly from my room.
Later my mother entered my room. She kissed my forehead, her lips cool and dry, and turned off my light and went out. I woke suddenly into the darkness and heard my room filled with whispers. I listened to distant talk and through the haze of dread and half-sleep thought I recognized the voice of Mr. Dinn. The harp sounded softly. I dropped back into sleep.
During breakfast the next morning I told my mother of my dream.
“I also dreamt of your father last night,” she said. “It isn’t unusual for that to happen.”
She looked down into her coffee cup as she spoke. She seemed not to have slept. She had on her pink housecoat. Her eyes were red and puffy, her long hair uncombed.
“Was Mr. Dinn here?”
“Yes. He came to tell me about Jakob Daw’s visa.” “When will Uncle Jakob come?”
“I don’t know. But when he does come he’ll have trouble remaining.”
“Why?”
“There are people in Washington who don’t like his politics.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It means there are powerful people in the government who won’t let him remain in America more than a few months because they think he’s a threat to the country.”
“Where will he go?”
“I have no idea, Ilana.” She paused and stared down into her coffee cup. “I’m so tired,” she said, quietly but clearly. “Why don’t they leave us alone?”
“Do we know where Papa is?”
“I called the newspaper. As far as they know your father is still in Bilbao. I think you should get yourself ready for school. I don’t want you to be late. Go ahead, darling. I’ll clean up the dishes. It will give me something to do.”
On my way to school that morning I went by the candy store and saw the headlines. With some of the money my mother gave me for candy I bought a copy of The New York Times.
Crossing a street against the light, I was almost hit by a car. Sitting in the classroom and listening to the droning voice of the teacher, I kept looking down at the newspaper on my lap. During recess, I went off to a corner of the yard and stood alone, reading. A boy ran past, chasing a ball, saw me reading, and snickered. I glanced up for a moment and noticed my teacher, a graying middle-aged woman, standing with another teacher a few yards away near the schoolyard fence. They were both watching me. The yard was filled with the high happy sounds of playing children. I envied them and wished I could be like them. Playing in the warm dusty late morning sunlight unaware of the dark world beyond the school and the neighborhood and the city and the country and the ocean. Unaware of Franco and Hitler and Mussolini. Unaware of Spain and Madrid and Bilbao. Unaware of the destruction by airplanes of the little town of Guernica a few miles from Bilbao where my father and Jakob Daw now were. Unaware of the headline that read HISTORIC BASQUE TOWN WIPED OUT; REBEL FLIERS MACHINE-GUN CIVILIANS. Unaware of the story beneath the headline: “BILBAO, Spain, April 27.—Fire was completing today the destruction of Guernica, ancient town of the Basques and center of their cultural tradition, which was begun last evening by a terrible onslaught of General Francisco Franco’s Insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open city far behind the lines occupied precisely three and one-quarter hours…. At 2 A.M. today, when the writer visited the town, the whole of it was a horrible sight, flaming from end to end. The reflection of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the mountains ten miles away. Throughout the night houses were falling, until the streets were long heaps of red, impenetrable ruins.” I looked beneath the lower headline and saw the writer was someone called G. L. Steer. I wondered if my father had written about the bombing. My mother always brought home the paper for which he wrote; the candy store in our neighborhood did not carry it. I opened the newspaper and looked inside for the continuation of the story. The pages flapped in the cool April wind. The writer described the survivors who had fled from Guernica to Bilbao “in antique, solid-wheeled Basque farm carts drawn by oxen. The carts, piled high with such household possessions as could be saved from the conflagration, clogged the roads all night long.” I didn’t know what the word conflagration meant but thought it might have to do with destruction and fire. “Other survivors were evacuated in government trucks, but many were forced to remain round the burning town, lying on mattresses or searching for lost children or other relatives.”
A whistle signaled the end of the recess. I skipped down to the next paragraph. “The object of the bombardment seemingly was the demoralization of the civil population and destruction of the cradle of the Basque race. This appreciation is borne out by the facts, beginning with the day when the deed was done. Yesterday was the customary Monday market day in Guernica for the surrounding countryside. At 4:30 P.M. when the market was full and peasants were still coming in, church bells rang an alarm for approaching airplanes….”
I looked up. The yard was empty. I ran to my class and was late. I slid into my seat beneath the withering look of my teacher and amidst the grins and whispers of my classmates. Yes, how nice to be aware only of games and gossip, of dresses and parties, and not of airplanes, bombs, and Bilbao, and my father and Jakob Daw somewhere near the fires of Guernica.
The apartment was empty when I returned home. I sat in the kitchen and went on reading the newspaper. “The whole town of 7,000 inhabitants plus 3,000 refugees was slowly and systematically pounded to pieces. For a radius of five miles around, the raiders bombed separate easerios, or farmhouses. In the night these burned like little candles in the hills. It is impossible to state the total number of victims….”
I heard my mother come in the door. She had a copy of the newspaper for which my father wrote and there was a story in it by my father about the fighting around Bilbao. The story had been written the day of the bombing of Guernica. The paper also carried a story about Guernica that had not been written by my father.
“Mama, did you call the newspaper again?”
She had called the newspaper. No one there knew exactly where my father was. They assumed he was in Bilbao and were expecting additional stories by him from there.
Late that night I woke and heard my mother singing in the living room in a low haunting voice that chilled me. What strange music came from her, what soft yet piercing tones, a subdued rise and fall of minor-key melodies and wordless songs that held me frozen to my bed. Then she stopped and began to talk in a language that sounded like Yiddish. And suddenly an image of Jakob Daw’s little black bird flew across my mind. I saw it clearly, flying and circling, searching for the source of the music of the world. And I asked myself: What would the bird do if he ever discovered that source? Would he swoop down and bomb it?
The next day after school I walked quickly beneath the spring trees along Eastern Parkway on my way home. The air was golden with sunlight, but I felt chilled. Passing the yeshiva, I saw a crowd of children in the open area in front of the building. I stopped for a moment. It seemed a festive crowd. The double door of the building was wide open and children kept streaming in and out, some carrying pieces of cake. I started to walk on, then stopped again. David Dinn had just emerged from the building with some of his friends, all with cake in their hands. I stood on the sidewalk near the curb, watching them talking and eating. Then I saw David look past his friends and notice me. He said something to his friends and came quickly toward me.
“Have you heard anything about your father?”
“No.”
“That was a terrible bombing.” “Did you see the newspapers?” “My father told me about it.” “
Is today a holiday?”
“It’s Lag Ba’omer. The day the plague stopped. Do you know the story about Rabbi Akiva and his students and the plague?” “Yes. The revolt against Rome. Is it very cold?” “It’s not cold.”
“I should have worn my heavy sweater.” He gave me a look of concern. “Do you want me to walk you home?”
“Two nights ago I dreamed my father came into my room and kissed me. Do you ever have dreams like that about your mother?”
A shadow passed over his pale face. He did not answer.
“David?”
“Sometimes,” he said in a low voice, and glanced quickly around. “Look, let me tell my friends I’m walking you home.”
He went over to his friends. I saw them staring at me. The wind blew cruelly. The newspaper, folded and tucked under my arm, seemed strangely burdensome.
David Dinn came back to where I stood.
“I’m very cold,” I said.
“Come on,” he said.
We walked together along the parkway.
“Your father came over to my house the other day.”
“I know.”
“Your father helped my Uncle Jakob get a visa.”
“I don’t know anything about what my father does.”
“I know what my father does.”
David did not respond. He walked bent forward, a little stooped. We left the parkway and turned into the side street.
“Do you want some of this cake?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I’m very cold. Could I borrow your jacket?”
“It’s a man’s jacket,” he said, hesitating.
“I’m very cold, David.”
“You’re not—” He broke off and slipped the jacket from his thin body and draped it over my shoulders. “Let me carry that for you,” he said, and took the Times from under my arm.
“Do you celebrate Lag Ba’omer every year?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And it happened two thousand years ago?”
“That’s right.”
