Stones in Water

by Donna Jo Napoli

  These people could argue all night. But Roberto couldn’t listen to them all night. He got off the chair and lay on the floor.

  One of the men came over and pulled him to his feet. He handed him his clothes—all but the boots.

  Roberto got dressed. It hurt to pull the sweaters over his left arm. It scared him to look at the crusted blood on the wool of the sleeve where he’d been shot. Was he bleeding right now through the bandage the woman had put on his arm? And it hurt to use that arm to pull up his trousers. Yet an unexpected gratitude overwhelmed him. He felt thick and warm and, despite the pain, oddly safe in those peasant clothes.

  The man tied Roberto’s hands behind his back. He tied his ankles. He said something.

  Roberto lay down on the floor again. He curled his back toward his knees, as though to squeeze away the pain. Somewhere in the back of his head the image of a hunchback shimmered. Was it Samuele? Was it Roberto himself?

  Then he was instantly asleep.

  * * *

  When he woke, the room was full of men wearing small caps and muttering to one another. Roberto was sweaty and stiff. The house was tightly made, and a fire had been going all night. He shouldn’t have slept fully dressed.

  One of the men from last night saw him wake. He untied Roberto and let him relieve himself in a chamber pot. Then he sat him at the table and put a bowl in front of him.

  Roberto snaked his hands into his pockets and waited for someone to fill the bowl. That’s when he realized his pockets were empty. He looked around the room. The things from his pockets lay in a small pile on the floor by the other provisions from the sled. Roberto jumped up and leaped for the pile. His fingers closed over the Polish girl’s gift stone as one of the men grabbed his arm. His left arm. He let out a cry of pain and clutched the stone to his chest.

  The man pushed him back into his chair. And all the men were talking at once. They forced his hand open and examined the stone and talked. Then the man put the stone on the table.

  Roberto snatched it back. He looked from one man to the next. It was just a stone. They could see it was just a stone.

  The men talked. One of them yelled at him sharply.

  His boy woke up. A man said something to him. The boy cried out happily and ran to the table. The man put a bowl in front of him, too. Then the man poured from a pitcher into both bowls.

  The smell of goat soaked the air and rushed up Roberto’s nose. Steamy, foaming goat milk filled his bowl. Roberto stared in delight; he hadn’t expected goats in this flat country. The man gave each boy a large hunk of bread. Roberto didn’t need a second invitation. He put the stone in his pocket and ripped off pieces of the bread. He dunked them in the goat milk and ate as fast as he could. It was delicious.

  The men tried talking gently to him now. One of them spoke a few words of German. Roberto worked to keep his eyes dull. He prayed that his boy wouldn’t remember when he’d said that single German word to him—Wasser. He looked quickly at him. The boy just ate.

  Another man tried garbled Italian. Roberto’s heart sped. He concentrated on eating. He refused to look at his boy. But now the man was saying the word for “boy.” The boy had to recognize it; it was what Roberto called him.

  The boy stood up. Roberto almost gagged on his bread. The boy took the pitcher of goat milk and refilled his own bowl. Then he refilled Roberto’s. He went back to eating, making loud slurping sounds.

  Roberto looked at the full bowl in front of him. It wasn’t an accident. He was sure his boy had filled the bowl at that very moment to show he recognized Roberto’s language. Did that mean he’d stand by him—he wouldn’t give him away? Or did that mean he’d blackmail him, like the food thief blackmailed Samuele back at the farm work camp?

  Another man tried some other language on Roberto—something odd that Roberto felt sure he’d never heard before.

  Roberto looked at them with a blank face, eating steadily. He finished his bread. He drank the remaining milk in the bowl and licked it clean. He was full and satisfied. He was ready to face anything. He looked at the men with clear eyes. He would wait them out. They would have to decide what to do with him without knowing anything about him.

  Their decision came swiftly. They tied his hands behind him and slapped his hat on his head. They put his boots in front of him.

  Roberto refused to step into the boots. Soldier boots.

  The men talked about this, too. Then one of them pushed him to the ground. Pain shot up his left arm. He groaned. The man jammed the boots onto Roberto’s feet.

  They pushed him out the door. The morning air was mild, with hardly a breeze. Roberto shuffled down a street, around a corner, pushed, always pushed, by the hands of a half-dozen men. He moved through fog so thick, he could hardly see the ground beneath his feet. It was as though he walked in clouds. Most of the buildings were abandoned. Had the German and Italian soldiers made it past the ditch, after all? But none of the doors Roberto passed were bashed in. No windows that he could see were broken. Something had happened to this town, but it didn’t look like war or like what Roberto knew of war. These buildings gave the sense of having been abandoned for years.

  They walked down another street, around another corner. Then they opened a door and pushed Roberto into what was clearly an official building. They stepped into a foyer, practically filling it. They pounded on the door on the right. It opened and a somewhat stupefied man stood back as they all poured into that office.

  When the talking was over, Roberto was left sitting in a chair, his arms tied behind him and around the chair back, so that he couldn’t get up. The man whose office it was sat behind the desk. And the other men had finally been persuaded to go on their way.

  The man at the desk said something. He got up and walked around Roberto. He pointed at the hateful boots. He sat at the desk again.

  Roberto’s boy came in. He talked to the man. The man talked and talked. The boy looked long at Roberto. He left.

  Maybe the town was too small to have a jail. Or maybe prisoners of war weren’t put in the jail. Roberto wiggled his hands. The rope was tight. His left arm throbbed now. And his right knee, the one he’d slammed on the ground yesterday evening as he raced through the woods, hurt again.

  But at least he wasn’t cold. The office had no source of heat, so Roberto’s layers of clothes served him well. And the hat had little flaps that covered his ears. They felt good.

  The man cleared his throat. He spoke again, but this time his voice was different. He wasn’t asking questions or scolding. He was just talking. He sounded sad. Then he fell silent. He put his elbows on the desk and dropped his head in his palms.

  There were knocks on the door. A group of women came in with one of the men from this morning. Every single woman wore a kerchief on her head with a part in her hair showing at the forehead. It was like a school dress code—a uniform. And now Roberto noticed: All these women were bone thin, like the woman who’d cut out his bullet. And the men he’d seen were thin, too. Snippets of old newsreels about famine in Ukraine came rushing into Roberto’s head. That was years ago. These people had been hungry for years.

  The women looked at Roberto while the man talked on and on to them. There was no animus in their faces. There wasn’t much of anything except a worried curiosity. They left.

  Roberto yawned. The man at the desk looked at him and yawned, too. He stood and hitched up his loose trousers at the waist. He said something. Then he went out through a back door. He came back a few moments later, stretched, and sat down again.

  A group of children filed into the room and looked at Roberto in silence. Their faces were round, even over their stick-thin bodies. Their eyes were brown. They could have been children anywhere—children in Venice or in the streets of Munich or in the pen of Polish Jews. After a while the man shooed the children out.

  A long period passed again. Roberto felt stiff all over. He pushed his legs out full length and wiggled his toes inside his boots. The man glanced at
him. The skin on his knee tightened. A scab had formed over the spot where he’d hurt himself yesterday. How long would it take for a scab to form over the bullet hole in his arm?

  His boy came in holding a sweet bun bigger than both his hands. Roberto looked at it in amazement. So did the man. It was clear the boy held a treasure. He talked to the man, who licked his bottom lip several times. The boy sniffed loudly at the bun every so often as he talked. Why didn’t he just take a huge bite? That’s what Roberto wanted to do. Gobble it up.

  Roberto’s stomach growled. The boy and the man looked over at him. The boy left.

  The man said a few words to Roberto. He pulled a watch from his pocket and glanced at it. It had to be past noon—it was definitely lunchtime. The man walked behind Roberto and checked the knot that held his wrists together. He rested his hand softly on Robert’s head for an instant. Then he bolted the office door from the inside and went out through the back door.

  Within seconds, the back door reopened. His boy ran in, holding peasant boots under his arm. In one hand was a hunting knife. Roberto jerked himself to attention. Every muscle tensed. The boy put the boots on the floor and ran behind Roberto. He sawed at the ropes on Roberto’s wrists till they split.

  Roberto stood up. He was free.

  The boy jammed the peasant boots into Roberto’s stomach. “Skoro! Bizhy!” He ran out the door, holding the knife.

  Roberto clutched the boots, dumbfounded. Then he raced after the boy. They went through a small room with a chamber pot in one corner and out another door to the outside. They were behind the building now, in a bare courtyard that several other buildings backed onto. The sun had burned off the fog, and the surfaces of everything glistened. The boy hissed something and pointed at the boots. He was right, of course. Roberto sat on the ground and pulled off the German boots. He put on the peasant ones. Now he looked just like any other Ukrainian kid.

  The boy stuffed Roberto’s old boots into a crate behind the building next door. He pulled a roll from his pocket, dropped it in Roberto’s lap, and ran between two buildings.

  Roberto ran after him. But no one was between the buildings. His boy had disappeared. No. He couldn’t have deserted him so soon. Roberto needed him to escape. He needed him.

  Roberto ran to the front of the buildings and stopped. He peeked out at the street. It was empty. Lunchtime. Every last soul was off eating. He came out from the alley and ran down the block, looking around wildly for his boy.

  A door opened ahead of him.

  Roberto ducked between two buildings.

  He heard men talking. Their voices got closer. He crouched and turned his back on them. He felt like he was going to choke. The voices and footsteps passed.

  Roberto stood up. He realized he was still clutching the roll his boy had given him. He took a big bite and peeked at the road. A man came out of that same door, crossed the street, and got into a small truck. The sides were wooden slats connected together with steel cords. One of the slats was broken, and Roberto could see that the bed of the truck was empty.

  A surge of energy filled him. Could he climb into the back of the truck without the driver seeing him?

  The truck drove off.

  Roberto clenched his teeth. He had to be faster in taking whatever opportunities came up. He had to be fast like his boy. Fast like Memo and Sergio.

  Another truck was parked behind where the first one had been. An identical truck. Roberto couldn’t see into the back of it. It might be completely full—with no room at all for a stowaway. He looked up and down the road. Nothing else seemed to offer even the smallest hint of a promise. He had to chance it.

  He dashed across the street and climbed into the back of the truck. It was blessedly empty. He lay flat on the wooden bottom. He didn’t even dare to finish the roll clutched in his right hand. Anyone who looked in the back of the truck could see him. Anyone. He heard a door slam. Then footsteps. Roberto’s breathing was too loud. He held his breath. The footsteps stopped. A voice called out.

  Another voice answered. And someone ran toward the truck.

  Roberto flattened his palms on the truck bed, letting go of the roll. There was nothing to hold on to. He had the unbearable sensation of falling.

  The truck doors slammed. Both of them, one after the other. The truck engine revved up, and it rolled down the street.

  Roberto found he was panting. The sun was high. He squinted his eyes against it. The truck turned, and he slid. He clanked against the truck side—oh, no—he was sure the people in the truck cab had heard. But the truck didn’t stop. It went slowly through the streets. Roberto felt around for the roll. He found it and ate. He was grateful the buildings were only one story high—no one could just happen to look out an upper window and see a boy in the back of a truck stuffing bread into his mouth. He would make it out of town.

  But the truck turned another corner and stopped abruptly.

  UNDER BUSHES

  Roberto heard two people get out of the front of the truck. One of them walked around and opened the back.

  Roberto sat up.

  The old man blinked his eyes in surprise. Then he shooed him away.

  Roberto bolted over the side of the truck and ran past the other man, who was kneeling by a front wheel. Roberto saw the river at the end of the road. He ran straight for it.

  The men shouted. Their voices were startled. Roberto heard running.

  He left the road and ducked into the trees that flanked both sides of the river. He ran. Pain pounded in his left arm. He held it across his chest. The running behind him got closer.

  He went down to the bushes at the water’s edge. He stumbled and crawled far under a bush and cracked his head hard against something. Wet stuff ran down the bridge of his nose. He wiped it away—blood. He let himself drop so that he lay flat on the ground, dizzy, aching in his arm, his knee, and now the top of his head. He shut his eyes. Lights danced behind his eyelids. He opened them and looked at the dirt. Nausea rose in his throat. He couldn’t let himself vomit now. They’d hear. He put both hands over his mouth and tried to steady his stomach.

  He heard the men run past.

  He waited.

  After a while, he heard them talking. Their voices got louder. They passed by again, close this time—very, very close. They kept walking, back to the road.

  Roberto felt around under the bush. The thing he had bashed his head against moved when he pushed it. It was wooden. His groping hand closed over an open edge. His heart beat hard with rising hope. He worked his way out from under the bushes, pulling the wooden thing behind him.

  It was a boat.

  Roberto let his breath out in relief. He knew nothing really about how to fend off wild animals or how to stay warm in snow. But he knew about boats—oh, yes, he knew about boats.

  The boat was barely his body’s length and only three times his width at the center. It had no seat. Roberto crawled back under the bushes and felt around. He grabbed a paddle. There was only one.

  He quickly eased the boat into the water, crunching through the last bits of thin ice that hadn’t yet broken up at the very edge. He stood to paddle like in a gondola, but the handle of the paddle was too short. He had to kneel to make it work. It was tempting to hug the shore, so that he would run less of a risk of being seen. But he didn’t know if the men would come back in an instant with more men. So he let the current carry him to the center of the river where the water ran the fastest.

  He paddled like mad, skimming the top of the water. The river was shallow at this time of year. Bigger boats could never pass. Good—that meant he wasn’t likely to meet others on the water. If only no one followed.

  He didn’t rest till late afternoon. He must have covered a good forty or fifty kilometers, and he’d seen no villages at all. Once he saw a few long-legged animals in the distance, maybe mules. They must have been out to pasture, but there weren’t any people in sight. And once he saw a windmill. That’s all.

  The river r
an through a gently sloping, broad valley. Meadows filled huge depressions. There was no snow here, though the air wasn’t much warmer than back in his boy’s settlement. The grasses were dry yellow. On the west bank he passed a dirt road that ran from the river’s edge to a wooded area in the distance. It looked like it had been lumberjacked. He knew that way beyond the woods rose the white-capped Carpathians, but he couldn’t see that far.

  Roberto was hungry, but just being on the water kept him calm. He sat in the bottom of the boat and stretched his legs. He thought over the past few days. He’d walked for three days before he found his boy. Taking off for the fact that sometimes he’d gone southeast instead of due south, he figured he must have traveled fifty kilometers southward each day. Maybe a bit less because he’d walked in snow some of the time, and he’d stopped to watch the soldiers pass. So maybe he averaged forty kilometers a day. That made one hundred and twenty kilometers. Then he walked one full day with his boy and most of that night alone—all of it almost directly south. So add on at least another sixty—to make one hundred and eighty kilometers. Plus this afternoon in the boat. That made a grand total of two hundred and twenty to two hundred and thirty, at a conservative estimate. It couldn’t be that much farther to the Black Sea.

  He pulled off his right glove and let his hand hang over the edge so that his fingertips played in the snow-fed water. He wasn’t afraid of getting cold. The sun would last another few hours; the river flowed south–southeast. Things were going well for the moment.

  He thought about the hot goat milk at breakfast and about the roll his boy gave him. It seemed hunger was the plague of his life. But the roll had taken off the edge; he’d been much hungrier than this before. And he’d be much hungrier again. He resisted the temptation to stop and search for food. He had to be patient and do things in the right order. He was traveling well now. He should keep traveling. So long as he was on water, he had nothing to fear.

  But he did need a rest if he was going to travel well. So he let himself drift.