Human Solutions

by Avi Silberstein

  I nodded sympathetically.

  “It wasn’t bad at first—I was so happy to be alive. Now I’m getting a bit fed up with suckling and being called names and having apples thrown at me.”

  “I can’t stay long,” I said. “I got in trouble for visiting you. But tomorrow is going to be a big day.”

  Tibor’s face brightened.

  “I’m going to need your help,” I said. “Have you got anything to swing at a man with?”

  Tibor nodded seriously.

  “Great,” I said. “Keep it handy.” I told him when I’d be coming by and what to do.

  Tibor brought a hand up to scratch at his head, and the goat that he was petting began bleating and nudging him with her nose. He resumed his duties, and she happily tried to lick her eye with a surprisingly long tongue.

  I pulled a paper bag out from my pocket and tossed it over the fence. Tibor opened it up and pulled out a large slice of kuchen.

  “From breakfast,” I said.

  Tibor took a bite and made a face. “It’s a bit dry,” he said.

  “I made it.”

  “It would be heavenly with a tall glass of goat milk,” Tibor said, apologetically.

  “The tape recorder—” I said, “I need it back.”

  He fished it out from some hidden nook and lobbed it over the fence.

  A group of children was approaching, and I made a hasty departure.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “Cut! Stop!”

  Greta obeyed, reluctantly silencing her musicians with the flick of a wrist. Then she turned slowly with a scowl on her face.

  “That was much too fast,” Maca said. “Let’s try it again, but this time I want the music to be slower.”

  Greta glowered at me, and I shrugged.

  “Action!” Maca yelled. A young boy dressed in overalls began skipping across the stage. He carried a cardboard guitar in hand, and was pretending to strum it. Greta cued the band, and they began to play a high-spirited German folk tune.

  “It’s too loud,” Maca said, jotting down something in the notepad I had given her. We were sitting together on a pew, while the rest of the cast and the musicians tried to run through the play without getting interrupted.

  On the stage, the boy who was playing a young Uncle Peter stopped skipping. He approached a group of farmers and animals that were sitting in a circle on bales of hay. Greta brought her hand down, and the band lowered its volume down to a whisper.

  “Hi, folks!” he said.

  “Hi,” said the farmers, as well as some of the animals.

  “I’m Uncle Peter, and I’m here to teach you about God and those things.”

  “Oh, good!”

  In this way, the young Uncle Peter managed to convince the farmer and his animals that they were living a life of sin and that, by accepting God and Uncle Peter, they would be blessed.

  “Cut!” yelled Maca, shooting out of her seat and towards the stage. She began lecturing the young Uncle Peter on how to show more enthusiasm and excitement. I walked over to the right of the stage, where Claudio was holding up one of the scenery backdrops. I adjusted something that did not need adjusting. I had decided not to tell him anything about the escape tomorrow—it would only make him anxious, and I didn’t want him to let anything slip to any of the other children.

  “When are we leaving?” Claudio said, when he saw it was me.

  “Any day now,” I said. “You’ve got to be ready at any moment.”

  “My mom,” he said. “She … she … I don’t want to be a Sprinter.” His voice cracked. I looked down at his hands. He had been picking at his knuckles—they were swollen and raw.

  “We’re so close,” I said. “I need you to hang in there. Your mom needs you to hang in there—okay?”

  “My dad didn’t want me to come here,” he said

  This was the first I had heard of any of this—Elena had not said much about Claudio’s father.

  Claudio’s eyes were darting around the room. “The other boys say that, on the first night, Uncle Peter takes you into the bath with him. You have to wash him. He …”

  Claudio couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out. His breathing was erratic.

  “Look at me,” I said, squatting next to him.

  He did.

  “I’ll get you out of her before you ever become a Sprinter. I give you my word—now breathe slowly and deeply.”

  I sent him to the bathroom to calm down and wash his face. Then I went around to the front of the stage. Maca was demonstrating to the young Uncle Peter how to skip like he meant it. I persuaded her to let them run through the scene without any further interruptions, and we sat back down to watch the young Uncle Peter comically win over a group of farmers and unidentifiable animals. The act ended with him skipping away and all of them skipping in a line after him.

  We proceeded through the play, making sure that people more or less knew what they were doing and that Greta and the band knew when to play which bits of music. It was not altogether a bad performance, especially given the minimal amount of time that we had to work on it.

  Maca sighed loudly and wrote something down in her notebook. “Let’s try this again—from the beginning!” she yelled.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  I tossed and turned all night, falling in and out of a shallow sleep—the kind of sleep that does not really feel like sleep at all. In the end, I got out of bed an hour earlier than necessary and took a long, hot shower. I sat on the edge of my bed and tried to relax my entire body, muscle by muscle. When I was done, I went over to my bag, in the corner of the room—where it had remained since my arrival. I pulled out a few necessary items (my ID card, money, some photographs) and put them in my pockets. I looked around the room; if all went as planned, I would not be setting foot in here again.

  Anita greeted me as soon as I entered the kitchen. “I need your help,” she said. She handed me a cookbook and opened it to a recipe for carrot muffins. I nodded and went to find some willing helpers to wash and grate several pounds of carrots. In this way, the next hour flew by: the carrots had to be soaked in lemon juice; butter had to be melted; walnuts had to be chopped; raisins had to be added to the batter—

  “Hold on!” Anita came rushing over.

  “What is it?” I said, looked around.

  “The raisins,” she said. “There are raisins in the recipe.”

  “Yes—”

  “Have you added them?”

  I pointed at the oversized mixing bowl in front of me. The raisins had just been added but had not been stirred in yet. Anita wiped her brow and sagged against the counter.

  “He hates raisins.”

  “Who?”

  “We have to pick them all out.”

  Most of the raisins were easy to remove, but some had begun to sink into the soft, gooey batter. I rolled up my sleeves, and Anita did the same. We worked side by side, arms deep into the mixing bowl, squeezing batter-coated chunks between our fingers to figure out if they were walnut bits or raisins.

  “He hates raisins?” I asked.

  “All dried fruit,” Anita said.

  “Then why do we even have raisins here?”

  “When he’s gone,” Anita said, “sometimes I like to add them to dessert. Everyone else loves them.”

  The carrot muffins went into the oven at the last possible moment, and, when they emerged, they were shuttled straight to the serving table. When most people had sat down to eat their breakfast, I went to ask Uncle Peter if I could make an announcement.

  “It’s about the play,” I said.

  “This carrot muffin,” he said. “It smells like raisins.”

  “Smells like raisins?”

  “It does,” he said. “Here.”

  I dutifully smelled it. “Have you found a raisin?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Well, then, I don’t know how it could smell like raisins.”

  “Make your announcement already,” Uncle Peter said.

/>   I got up and clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention. “THIS AFTERNOON, DIRECTLY AFTER LUNCH, WE WILL ALL GO TOGETHER TO THE CHURCH,” I called out, cupping my hands around my mouth, “FOR THE BIG PERFORMANCE OF THE FIRST PLAY EVER TO BE HELD AT THE ­COLONY. IT IS THE STORY OF UNCLE PETER’S LIFE AND OF THE COLONY!”

  Uncle Peter raised an arm up into the air like a bullfighter, and everyone cheered. He stood up, and the cheering stopped. “Attendance is mandatory,” he added, and then sat back down.

  Once back in the kitchen, I ate three of the carrot muffins and decided to forfeit my daily bowl of oatmeal. I had a lot to do, and being a bit hungry would help me do it. The post-breakfast crew began cleaning up, and I went to find Anita. She was in the walk-in cooler, picking tomatoes out of a box and placing them carefully in the fold of her apron.

  “Would you grab as many of those as you can carry?” she asked. I obliged, balancing several tomatoes in the crook of one arm. We walked back out to the sink, and Anita began washing them, one by one.

  “I just wanted to thank you for letting me make those things the last couple of days,” I said. “The kuchen and the carrot muffins.”

  Anita looked up, surprised. “I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

  Neither of us said anything for a moment.

  “I don’t understand how you do this,” I said. I couldn’t look at her—it was not a fair thing to say to someone.

  “It’s not a choice,” Anita said. “If it was a choice, it would be hard. But it’s surprisingly easy to grow accustomed to situations that are outside of your control.”

  “Someday, you’re going to get your little restaurant,” I said, putting an arm around her and squeezing her shoulder.

  “Run along now,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day out there.”

  She was right—the sun was beaming down on the Colony, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Ernesto was sitting on the front porch of the library, just like he had been on my very first day. He was impatiently waiting for me to arrive so that we could take the chickens out for a walk.

  “Just a very short walk for now,” I said. “We’ll need them to have lots of energy later on.”

  FORTY-NINE

  I spent the rest of the morning putting the finishing touches on the escape plan and gathering the tools I would need. When the lunch bell rang, I followed Ernesto out of the library and into the dining hall. We lined up to fill our plates with shepherd’s pie, a grated beet salad, and a small cup of fruit salad.

  A woman confessed to sneaking food into her room for a midnight snack, and a man confessed to having tricked a fellow colonist into doing his bathroom chore for him. I finished eating and headed over to the Church. The set was almost completely up, and most of the children were in the costumes they would be wearing for the first act. There were jitters to ease and self-confidences to build, and I walked among the children and did my best.

  “Listen up, folks,” I said, waving everyone over. “I want to remind you of a couple of things. Number one—we are here to have fun. The audience is going to have a good time, they’re going to laugh and clap, and they’re going to love every minute of it. Number two—I’m not your director. Maca, here, is your director. She knows what’s going on, so take your cues from her.”

  The band began noisily tuning their instruments, and the children dispersed, clustering in small groups to tug at each others’ costumes and go over what they would be doing on stage. Maca came over and thanked me for reminding everyone about her very important role. The colonists had begun filing into the Church, and I went to ensure that they were all filling the seats up at the front first. When everyone was seated (with Uncle Peter prominently in the front row), I went up to the front of the stage.

  “Welcome, my fellow colonists,” I began. I looked out into the sea of white shirts and dark-print skirts, of bonnets and suspenders.

  “I am delighted to bring you the very first play that has ever been performed at the Colony. It is the story of Uncle Peter and of how the Colony came to be. The actors have worked very hard, as have the wonderful volunteers who helped with the set and costumes, and Greta’s hard-working orchestra. Let’s give them our full attention. And now, without further ado, I urge you to sit back and enjoy the first and only performance of “How We All Ended Up Here.”

  The audience applauded dutifully, and I went backstage. A girl walked too quickly across the stage, holding up a sign that read “Act One: The Birth.” A boy came out riding a broomstick with a paper-mache horse head stuck on it.

  “I’m Uncle Peter’s father!” cried the boy. He had a yarn beard pasted on his face, and he looked terrified. Greta tapped her baton against her music stand, and the flutes section began playing a happy German folk tune. The other instruments joined in, and the boy on stage began to look more comfortable.

  “Today’s the day I’m going to become a father,” said the boy, galloping across the stage. “My wife is going to have a baby. That baby is going to someday be Uncle Peter!”

  A table and chairs were carried out onto one side of the stage, and a girl with a pillow stuffed under her dress came out.

  “Oh, husband!” she cried out. “This baby is ready to come out. Come home, so you can take me to the doctor!”

  The boy took his cue and galloped over to where the girl was doing a good job of feigning agony. “I’m home, wife,” he said. “Now, hop on my horse, and I will take you to the doctor’s house.”

  The girl struggled to her feet and mounted the wooden broomstick. The boy took off without giving her any warning, and she was left to run after him.

  “Oh, husband!” she ad-libbed, “go slower, please. I’m pregnant, don’t forget.” She put her hands on the boy’s shoulders to prevent him from hurrying away, and, soon, they were prancing happily around the stage, dropping her pillow only once (to the audience’s delight).

  A crowd of farmers and animals came onto the stage carrying a large bale of hay.

  “This baby can’t wait!” said the girl. “It’s coming out now—look, there’s a farm. Let’s stop, so I can have my baby there.”

  The band began playing an ominous tune. The farmers and animals excitedly made a ring around the girl while she yelled and wailed for far too long—Maca was in the wings frantically signaling for her to give birth already. When the crowd pulled back, the pillow was gone and the girl held a doll in her arms. The trumpet section played a triumphant fanfare. The girl held the doll up to the audience and said, “I shall name him Uncle Peter!”

  The audience cheered, and I saw Uncle Peter smile genuinely for the first time. The actors hurried offstage in the midst of the applause. A boy walked solemnly across the stage with a sign—“Act 2: A Traveling Young Man.”

  A boy skipped out onto the stage, strumming on a cardboard guitar. Greta cued the band into another bouncing folk tune. The boy stopped at center stage and addressed the audience. “I’m Uncle Peter,” he said, “at the age of nineteen!” He continued skipping, and the same crowd of farmers and animals scurried onto stage left. The boy noticed them and skipped over.

  “Well, hello there,” he said cheerfully.

  They responded with a dejected chorus of “Hi’s” and “Hello’s.”

  “You don’t sound very happy,” said the boy.

  One of the farmers stepped forward. “We’re not,” he said. “It’s hard to make a living these days, and we don’t have any spiritual connection to our world.”

  “Oh, boy,” said the boy. “Have I got good news for you!”

  He began extolling the virtues of loving each other and a higher power; he told them about his vision: a self-sustaining community where people would be free to farm and live and love each other without the pressures and dangers of the outside world. The farmers and animals grew increasingly excited, and the band played louder and louder, until everyone began jumping around on stage in time to the music and—under Maca’s furious gesturing—they finally skipped offstage toge
ther.

  In Act Three, a series of chairs were lined up on the stage, and the children played passengers on a train that kept getting filled with more and more soon-to-be colonists. Some people in the audience hollered—presumably those who had been on that train. Then the set was transformed by bobbing layers of cardboard blue waves, and the children were on a boat crossing the Atlantic. I poked my head around the curtain to take another look at Uncle Peter. He seemed to be enjoying himself, tapping his foot along to the intermittent music and occasionally nodding in recognition or approval.

  “Act Four: Finding Our Home” began with a young Uncle Peter buying up a piece of land from a businessman wearing an oversized suit. The crowd of followers—who, by this point in the play, were literally following him around on stage everywhere he went—began to cheer. They picked him up on their shoulders and marched him around the fenced area that represented the earliest incarnation of the Colony. The band played another triumphant tune, and the real Uncle Peter couldn’t hold back from throwing his fist into the air. The audience gave him a standing ovation—the children, believing it was for them, took a long set of uncoordinated bows, looking remarkably like a huddle of penguins.

  In the next act, Uncle Peter bought adjacent pieces of land from other farmers (and one particularly happy group of nuns). The children played the roles of current and past Colonists, much to the bemusement of the audience.

  “I’m Anita the cook,” said one little girl—the youngest of all the performers—in a white apron that dragged on the floor like a gown. “I make the goodest food in the world!”

  “And I’m Ernesto the librarian,” said a boy, “and my stories are funny!”

  I put my arm around Maca’s shoulders and told her that I would be stepping away for a moment. She looked up at me, her eyes fearful all of a sudden.

  “Hey,” I said, “who’s the director here?”

  “Me,” she said in a small voice.

  “Who’s running the show?”

  “I am.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Now listen—you’ve done a great job so far. You’ve been running a tight ship, and I want you to keep doing that. Okay?”