The women who sell him groceries also call him Yanek, and often with fondness.
Is Grandpa Michael angry at me for abandoning his name? Yanek wonders, and he doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t dare ask Grandpa Sergei.
When the war is over, I’ll go back home, and my parents will call me by the name I loved—Michael.
When he got back to the tree, to his dismay he saw that Grandpa Sergei’s face was bleeding.
“Grandpa Sergei,” he said, sinking to his knees.
“It’s nothing. Don’t be upset. One of the village bullies stood next to me, cursed me, threatened that if I didn’t clear out, he’d hit me. I got to my feet and slugged him. He tried to knock me down and scratched me. I kept on pounding him.”
“Do your wounds hurt, Grandpa Sergei?”
“No, they sting a little.”
“I’ll wash your face. Mother supplied me with iodine and bandages.”
“May God bless your mother.”
Grandpa Sergei’s face was scratched deeply. Yanek washed it carefully and put iodine on the wounds.
“You could have been a medic in my unit,” said Grandpa Sergei.
Yanek didn’t know what to answer, but in the end he said, “I hope the iodine will help to cure your scratches.”
“We’ll eat lunch and in the afternoon we’ll leave this place, with what we called an orderly retreat in the army.”
Yanek cooked cornmeal porridge for lunch, placing some pieces of cheese and a few spoonfuls of yogurt on the side of the plate. The fresh dairy products gave the meal a fuller taste.
“Does it hurt, Grandpa Sergei?”
“No. A man who’s been in the army is used to getting wounded. A soldier without scars isn’t a combat soldier.”
They ate at their leisure, finished the porridge and the yogurt, and Yanek made a cup of strong tea for Grandpa Sergei, and he lit his pipe for him. Grandpa Sergei gradually sank into himself.
Yanek cleaned the pot and the plates, the spoons and the cups, dried them, and put them in the pack.
During the months with Grandpa he learned to honor the vessels they used. Vessels for cooking and eating are part of you, and you must treat them like your hands.
It occurred to Yanek to ask Grandpa Sergei, “Where do we want to get to?”
“I assume, to Zhadowa. Not everything is in our hands.”
“In the end, where will we get to?” Yanek asked.
“We’ll get to the place God wants us to get to.”
Yanek didn’t ask anymore. Now he would think about the things Grandpa Sergei said to him. Sometimes Grandpa’s words trickle into him, and they come back to him in a dream.
18
They started off again. The backpack and bundle were heavy, but in time Yanek had learned to bear the weight. From time to time he said to himself: It’s certainly harder for my parents and grandparents.
Roaming in Grandpa Sergei’s company is like being in the army: you train during the day, you’re awake and alert and prepared for any attack, but still you’re free.
After walking hard for an hour, they stopped and rested under a tall pine tree in the heart of a field.
Grandpa Sergei started to talk, “When you wander, you learn what’s essential and what’s unimportant, what’s temporary and what’s permanent and abiding, what’s truth and what’s a lie. When a person sits comfortably in his home, he forgets the main thing. He’s busy with everyday concerns, fights about trivial matters, and he only thinks about himself and his property. But when you’re outside, without a house, only the sky above you and the earth beneath you, only then do you know that wandering, as hard as it may be, purifies you.”
Yanek listens to every word that comes from Grandpa Sergei’s lips. He doesn’t understand some of the things. But the melody of his speech is pleasant to his ears. Sometimes it seems to him that Grandpa Sergei’s words are only melody.
I have to learn that melody, and maybe then I’ll understand his words, he sometimes says to himself.
After that they got up and went on. Now he remembers that the first days with Grandpa Sergei were full of dread, unrest, yearning for his parents, and every night before sleeping he would say to himself: Tomorrow Father will come and take me home.
Grandpa Sergei, for his part, never tried to make things easy for him. He told him that a person who is wandering is exposed to dangers, and he has to learn to defend himself. “You can do it. If you want, you can. God helps those who make an effort.”
Once he asked Grandpa Sergei whether soldiers are also afraid.
“Certainly they’re afraid. Every living creature is afraid. But they learn to overcome fear. That’s the secret in a nutshell.”
They got to the next village in the evening. Thin smoke drifted up from the chimneys of the houses, and it was a quiet time. Housewives were making meals, and in some houses the family was already sitting and eating supper. Yanek remembered his own home at this hour. His father would return from the lumberyard, and his mother would be pleased at his arrival. Yanek liked his mother’s blintzes, the wild berry preserves she would pour onto the blintzes. Supper was always light and tasty.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Grandpa Sergei.
“About my home.”
“Your home is a good one. Your grandfather is a noble person, and your father inherited quite a bit of his nobility. They always helped people, whether they had the wherewithal or they were in a bad situation. There are no quarrels in your house. Your grandfather observed the tradition, and he often told me: Sergei, you mustn’t sink into sorrow, sorrow brings us down to the underworld, a man has to be happy with his lot. At first I didn’t understand his words, how can a poor, handicapped man like I am now be happy with his lot? Gradually I understood, that if a man has faith in God, he is happy. I learned a lot of things about God and man from him. He was a man filled with many generations of faith and wisdom.”
“Are all Jews like him?” Yanek asked, alarmed by his own question.
“Regrettably, no.”
“What happened?”
“They lost their faith.”
“All of them?”
“Not all of them, but many.”
“Why did that happen to them?”
“It’s like a great love. Sometimes the flame goes out. The Jews were devoted to God, heart and soul, for many generations. Suddenly, in the last generation, their faith left them.”
“Will faith return to them?”
“I’m sure it will.”
“Why does everyone hate the Jews, and only you have compassion for them?”
“I know their life, their faith, and their suffering. It isn’t easy to be a Jew, whether you’re religious or not. Suddenly they uproot them from their houses and send them to someplace unknown.”
Grandpa Sergei stopped talking, as sometimes happened with him, and Yanek didn’t ask any more questions.
Yanek went out to gather firewood and brought back a dry branch, immediately sawing it into pieces. Not until he had given Grandpa Sergei a cup of tea and lit his pipe for him did Grandpa Sergei return from the world he had sunk into and ask, “How are things?”
“Everything is fine. I’m about to cook cornmeal porridge.”
“God bless you.”
They sat and ate for a long time, and Yanek felt that Grandpa Sergei’s blessing lay upon his head. He was tired from the events of the day. Without spreading a blanket on the earth or folding a sack to lay his head on, he fell asleep where he was. “Yanek,” Grandpa Sergei called, but, since Yanek didn’t answer, he understood that he’d fallen asleep.
In his sleep Yanek went to his school, and he felt light, dressed in the peasant clothes Grandpa Sergei had lent him.
It was the eleven o’clock recess. The children ran around in the schoolyard and the corridors. Yanek recog-nized quite a few of them, but they didn’t recognize him. He moved forward, climbed the stairs, and entered his classroom.
Most of his clas
smates were standing, a few were talking, but most of them were watching the class clown, Edmond, who was imitating the mathematics teacher. They didn’t recognize Yanek.
In the end, one of the pupils approached him and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see my class.”
“Did you go to this school?”
“I was even in this class.”
“When?”
“More than a year ago.”
“What’s your name?”
“You have to figure that out.”
With a clumsy gesture, the boy turned to his friends and called out: “We have a new student in our class. Do you recognize him?”
“He’s a peasant. He comes from a village. He got here by mistake,” said a guttural voice.
“Not by mistake,” Yanek said softly.
“Who are you?” one of the pupils asked.
“Last year in this class you were studying equations with two unknowns.”
“Were you studying with us?”
“Correct.”
“Hans,” Yanek spoke to one of them, “you were learning to box. Do you still box?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to try me? Let’s have a friendly bout,” Yanek suggested.
“I’m out of shape.”
“It’s interesting that you don’t remember me. Where’s Christina? I’m sure she’ll remember me. Where is she?”
“She’s sick,” answered one of the children.
“Has she been absent from school for a long time?”
“A few months.”
“How is she? Did you visit her?”
“She’s in a sanatorium far from here.”
“And you never thought of going to her?”
“It’s far away, one or two hundred miles.”
“Why didn’t you go to visit Christina?” Yanek raised his voice and at the same time he raised a desk to the ceiling. The desk fell and broke apart. Yanek woke up from the force of the crash.
19
It was the middle of the night. He fell into a deep sleep again.
He was in an unfamiliar place and tried to identify all the objects that surrounded him, but everything he saw was strange to him.
While he was perplexed and wondering where he had ended up, what had brought him there, he heard a voice speaking to him.
“Yanek, you have successfully passed the first, important stage in physical training. Soon the practical actions will begin. Grandpa Sergei gave you what he’d gathered over his life and made you into a warrior. There are many injustices, and you’ll have to withstand severe trials. Don’t be afraid. Your strength will be with you, and you’ll emerge stronger from the struggle.”
Yanek woke up. The voices echoed in his ears, clear and emphatic. The first light of dawn glowed on the horizon. Grandpa Sergei was asleep, and Yanek sat up where he was, stunned.
When Grandpa Sergei woke up, Yanek promptly told him about the dream.
Grandpa Sergei wasn’t surprised when Yanek repeated the words he had heard and asked, “What am I to do, Grandpa?”
“Store those things up in your heart.”
“Still, Grandpa, what am I to do?”
“Don’t reveal that secret to anyone.”
“Not even to Mother and Father?”
“You may tell it to them.”
“But it was just a dream.”
“A dream is sometimes truer than reality.”
“Grandpa Sergei, may I go out for my daily run now?”
“Go, my friend. It’s too bad I’m disabled. I would join you.”
As soon as he began to run he felt that his body wasn’t as it was. He was light and floated. When he returned, he gave Grandpa Sergei a cup of tea and lit his pipe for him. For a moment he was surprised by Grandpa Sergei’s tranquil soul, the way he accepted misfortune without complaint.
The voices he had heard at night remained with him, and he felt a rustling in his ears and a little pain.
“Grandpa Sergei, I feel a slight pain in my ears.”
“No wonder. Wouldn’t ears that heard voices from somewhere hurt a little?”
“What should I do?”
“Nothing. I assume the pain will pass.”
Everything he did and saw that day was different from other days. There were moments when he felt elated and it seemed to him that he could fight against a few bad men and overcome them. But there were moments when he felt weakness and a lack of faith in himself and his strength. Grandpa Sergei knew even without asking that Yanek’s spirit wasn’t the same as before. Finally he said, “What are you thinking about, Yanek?”
“I’m not thinking. The voices I heard at night are still scurrying around in my head.”
“I told you. Hold on to those voices, and you’ll be content that they spoke to you in a dream. Agitation and mood swings aren’t fitting for a warrior.”
“Sorry, Grandpa Sergei.”
“It’s not a question of being sorry now, but of the correct stance. We have hard days before us, and we have to be calm, to think about the dangers with open eyes and to prepare for them.”
20
Grandpa Sergei, after sipping another cup of tea, turned to Yanek and said, “I want your advice, Yanek.”
“What about?” Yanek was alarmed.
“We’ve run out of food. Except for cornmeal, we have nothing to eat. Your father, among other things, also left us some cash. I didn’t think I’d touch the money or the valuables until he came back. But since we have nothing to eat, I want to borrow fifty marks from the money he left us, and with God’s help, when I have it, I’ll return it to him. What do you think?”
“My opinion is the same as yours, Grandpa,” said Yanek, and he was surprised by the words that left his lips.
For a moment Yanek sat without moving. All of Grandpa Sergei’s being, his large body, his huge blindness, suddenly seemed to him like a great secret you shouldn’t get too close to.
While they were listening to the tranquility of the evening, they heard steps approaching.
“Sergei,” called a woman.
“Tanya,” Grandpa Sergei recognized her voice. “How did you know I was here?”
“Yesterday I dreamed you were approaching the village, and I went out to meet you.”
“Strange. I also saw you in my sleep, but I didn’t know whether you’d want to see me.”
Tanya and Grandpa Sergei were cousins, and they had been very close friends when they were young. After Grandpa Sergei finished his military service and remained in the city, the connection was broken. Tanya married and had children, and Grandpa Sergei married a woman named Dorka.
“How many years has it been since I’ve seen you, Sergei?” Tanya asked.
“Many years,” answered Grandpa Sergei.
“Have you gone back to visit our village?”
“No. Since my parents died, I haven’t been there.”
“I haven’t gone back either,” said Tanya, “but the village stands before my eyes every day. I loved all the seasons there: the blossoming of spring, the summer sun, and the falling leaves in the autumn. But I especially loved the winter. Do you still remember me?”
“How could I forget?”
“We were friends, heart and soul. We used to swim in the river. We jumped off the bridge right into the stream. We used to go into the forest to pick berries. We’d sit and gobble them up, and we kissed each other a lot. We were always happy. Why didn’t you come back to the village after your army service, the way you’d promised me you would?”
“The city seduced me: the lights, the coffeehouses, the taverns, the movie theaters. In the end I met Dorka and married her. I didn’t live with her long. After three years of life together, she died. She was sick for two weeks, and she passed away without complaining. Four years after her death, I went blind.”
“Did you think of me all those years?”
“I did.”
“And what did you think?”
<
br /> “I thought about going back to the village and finding you.”
“And why didn’t you come back?”
“I already told you. The city seduced me. If it hadn’t been for the city, I would have returned to our village, and my life would have been different.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Of course I regret it.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“And now, do you forgive me?”
“No,” she said, laughing.
“Not even now, after all the years?” Grandpa Sergei wondered.
“Some sins are hard to forgive. I believed you’d return to me. I prayed and wept for nights on end, and you didn’t even send me a postcard.”
“I was a prisoner.”
“You were a prisoner? The brave soldier, decorated with medals, that I was so proud of, was captured by the city lights? Where was your will, where was your resourcefulness, and where were your promises?”
For a short time they sat together in silence. “Now I’ll go home,” she said, rising to her feet, and she added, “I’m glad I met you.”
“Tanya, you did me a great favor by coming to visit me.”
“It was nothing. A few childhood memories. Who’s the boy?” she asked.
“His father lent him to me. He helps me and guides me from place to place. He’s a sweet boy. Can he buy some supplies from you?”
“If he’ll come with me, I’ll give some to him.”
“Tanya, you’ve done me a great favor.”
Yanek went with her to her house, a big house, with a courtyard, a stable, a dairy, and chicken coops.
“What can I give you?”
“Whatever you want to give us. I have a fifty-mark bill.”
She went into the garden and came back with vegetables, and she took cheese and butter from the pantry, and she took a loaf of bread and more cheese down from the shelves, and when Yanek handed her the bill, she said, “No need.”
When Yanek returned to the tree and told Grandpa Sergei what had happened, he didn’t respond. Even when he spread a cloth on the earth and prepared the meal, Grandpa Sergei didn’t ask anything or say a word.
Long Summer Nights Page 6
