The Head of the House Page 2

  When they arrived back at the stall, Malke lay curled with her face to the wall. It was as if she had not even heard them enter. The unclean one was there too, sitting by a candle he’d brought, and whittling away at the hoof of his wooden bear.

  “You’re late, lad.”

  His tone, Sroolik noted, was rough, but not really angry.

  “The Sergeant offered me thick pea soup and two biscuits, so then I oiled the harnesses.” Sroolik had made up the lie and spoken it, before he’d even had time to weigh if it was strong enough—and safe.

  “Your sister—you know she got a little difficult.”

  Sroolik knew he was meant to apologize, make up some explanation, but his tongue felt glued down.

  “She ought to feel grateful, after all. You kids are eating well, no?”

  “Yes. I mean, thank you,” Sroolik stammered.

  “You make it clear to her, though. More trouble, and I leave.”

  “I will, sir. I will.”

  “Remember, you asked me. I didn’t force myself.”

  Sroolik felt like taking the candle and poking the flame into the cur’s eyes. Sroolik had asked him in as a friend, a protector. Welzel, though, had assumed this other thing, which Momma had always known, that men in uniform were vile.

  Malke kept her face turned from him as he led her out. Her normally pale cheeks were the color of red brick, and she still trembled like a little bird. Rivke, taking tiny hesitant steps, came out and started to trail after them. Sroolik waved at her to go back.

  Pent-up dogs growled and bellowed at Malke and Sroolik through closed shutters and bolted doors, as the two of them skirted the houses nearest their alleyway and struck off into the field behind. The moon had already risen, and the zigzagging silhouette of houses, rooftops, chimneys had a warm, soft glow. Suddenly Malke began to run, madly, like a hound on a hare’s trail. He chased after, not catching her until she fell.

  Huddled together, both wrapped in his one great coat, they sat against a low U-shaped stone wall far out in the fields. A shrine, a place where the goy farmers could pray to their Jesus, Saint Casimir and all their other idolatrous saints and holy ghosts, without having to hike back to the village, was how Momma had explained this crumbling, semi-ruined place to him. It looked as alone and sad as he felt.

  “I’m sorry—about today.”

  She sat quiet as the dead.

  “I never expected … that he would. …”

  Malke stared dully down at the stones arranged in crosses.

  “Malke, listen. For a few days, maybe even a week, until I can prepare what I need to get rid of him, you’ll have to—be nice to him.”

  Softly she began to cry. Then without a moment’s warning she was throwing up her hands and howling.

  Sroolik, terrified lest the whole village be awakened, caught her and tried to cover her mouth. But she shook herself free. After an awful moment, he realized they were too far away to be heard. She moaned till she was spent and crumbled on the stone platform with its weeds growing up through the cracks.

  His plan was to invite the louse to visit his rabbit snare, near which would be the elephant trap. But to be sure the vermin would come, and would step exactly where he was supposed to, Welzel would have to be made to believe that Sroolik truly was his friend. And that could not happen unless Malke would help.

  She did.

  And at night when the German was snoring, she and Sroolik would slip outside, and tremblingly she would ask her brother how much longer she would have to endure—and haltingly she would tell how she had to caress Welzel’s schlang, its length and then its tip, with her fingers, then her tongue, how she had to lie flat, spread her legs, to arch up on her shoulders and move once he had entered her, to lick inside his ears, to groan at the exact moment he groaned. Afterwards how she had to wash him with warmed water.

  Sroolik, listening, felt loathing—and for himself too. Bringing in the German had been his fault, all his. Sroolik felt unclean and sickened.

  But it was those very late afternoons when Malke and Welzel were together that the boy worked on his trap. About halfway up the second hill behind the village, there was a patch of woods where the treetops were sparse enough to allow smaller trees and bushes to grow. Sroolik knew of an exceptionally deep gully there about four feet wide. He had leapt it often. The gully’s bottom this time of year was dry.

  Sroolik’s first big problem was implanting his meticulously honed stakes into the sand bed. By the time he’d pounded one solidly in, its sharpness was totally blunted. After three such, he changed his procedure and sharpened them only after he’d firmly driven them in.

  Disguising the gully was even tougher. His plan had been to cover it with lots of leafy branches, and, over these, lots of twigs and dead leaves to resemble the forest floor. But the leaves wouldn’t stay where he placed them. They kept finding crevices and disappearing through them. To tighten his cover he pushed the limbs more closely together, but that didn’t work either. He piled on more branches and still more, hoping to build an impenetrable maze, but suddenly the whole construction creaked, sagged, and collapsed. Two days in a row this happened. It took him hours to retrieve the branches. Just to get at them all without impaling himself, he had to yank out several of his now deeply imbedded pointed stakes. At night he arrived home so exhausted, he hardly spoke even to his sisters.

  The next day, seeing Gunther sewing a mattress cover made out of potato sacks, Sroolik knew what to do. That evening, after he had only a thin layer of branches in place, he spread sacks over them. On these the dead leaves rested easily.

  The sun had already set. Gnats were whirring in his ears and eyes and biting him, but Sroolik dared not leave—not yet. He had to finish, and before it rained, or all his backbreaking hours and days would be washed away to nothing. What remained was to position the rocks which would fall from above and crush Welzel. The dog had to be stopped from ever climbing back out. But securing weighty rocks to an overhead branch proved harder than the boy had dreamed. He needed both hands just to climb the tree. So how could he get even one good-sized rock up there?

  Viciously he kicked at the loose-crumbled forest floor as he started home. There was no way. Even if he could get up in the tree with a load, what if one of the rocks slipped, or he did? The whole disguised covering would be demolished. It was hopeless. He’d have to find some other way. Brooding, he caught his toe in a root and went sprawling forward, landing painfully on his hands and chin. He had another idea. It was lucky, a blessing even, how his mind kept creating ideas.

  He found Welzel chipping away at his bear by candlelight.

  “Tomorrow,” Sroolik casually asked, “would you like to come with me to the forest?”

  “What for?”

  “You’ve never seen my rabbit snares.”

  “I’m not interested in trapping helpless animals. Only eating them—when they’re well cooked.” Welzel turned his carved bear face down, studying the tail portion.

  “Right near my best snare there’s a fallen nut tree with a trunk maybe a whole meter thick—walnut, I think. Didn’t you say that was the best kind of wood for carving?”

  Welzel’s nostrils flared, as if cologne water had suddenly been sprayed before him.

  Sroolik waited on the path, but just inside the tree line. That way, no one could see them set off together.

  Faintly in the distance he heard the mellow bugle notes signaling the end of the soldiers’ work day. This was it, the appointed time. But where was he, the snake?

  “Boy?”

  Sroolik jumped up, ecstatic and then terrified.

  “Over here.”

  He tapped his foot and began murmuring to himself, No, I’m not afraid, I must not be afraid.

  His rifle—the swine was carrying his rifle! Some days he left it at the barley shed, but today he’d brought it. That had to be a lucky sign. He had come, and he’d brought the gun. Two lucky signs!

  Sroolik led the way. It was uphil
l, not steep except for one spot where the path wove precipitously between two sheer outcroppings of rock. But even here Sroolik climbed easily, not stopping once to catch his breath, as if some powerful force were pulling him ahead and lifting away all the weariness of his long day of hauling empty coffins.

  There were sliding noises, gravel and small stones clinking against larger ones, then a loud groan. Sroolik swung his head back. The big viper had stumbled, letting his rifle fly out of his hands, and was now picking himself up and cursing hotly.

  “Are you all right?” Sroolik called down.

  “No,” Welzel growled.

  Sroolik closed his eyes, his heart sinking. It was over. Now the short-bearded pig would turn and go back.

  “We’ll come back this way, won’t we?” the German called, while brushing himself off.

  “Yes.”

  But why was he asking that?

  Sroolik watched him clamber downward, retrieve his rifle, and then move off the trail toward a large low-lying rock. One end of the rock tilted upward a bit and thus created a hollow between it and the ground, because he saw Welzel bend and slide in the gun. And now the pig was starting upward again.

  Sroolik exulted. Soon the infidel beast would crash down into his trap, but not the beautiful rifle. Now nothing could hurt it. And then—oh, please God!—it would become his.

  Welzel caught up with him atop the little bluff, and they walked on, still uphill, but more gradually.

  “How much further?” The soldier was panting.

  “Soon. Three, four more minutes.”

  “You sure it was walnut you saw? I haven’t seen a single one.”

  “Yes, several. Lots. Just a little way further. You’ll see for yourself.”

  The thicket before the gully—here it was, directly at his side. Go, he told himself, now! Don’t wait. He crouched, spread apart the leafy boughs, steeled himself for an instant, quickly moved in so that the foliage covered him, and then darted forward at top speed. In a moment he was at the edge of the hidden gully. Hardly stopping, he leaped across it.

  “This way now!” he called. He jumped up on a rotted tree stump and waved. It was important the beast should come straight, not wander off to the side. Straight, please—he had to.

  As Sroolik glanced down at the trap, his heart plummeted. It was hopeless. Two branches could be clearly seen, and the potato sacking too. During the night some of the dead leaves must have blown away. The worm would spot the stupid trap, halt, become furious, catch Sroolik and throw him into it. He swiveled his head in all directions. Should he make a break and run? Which way?

  But now the beast was clomping through the last few feet of brush. The boy, sweat breaking out from every pore, could only shut his eyes. He was petrified, his fingers glued together, his feet frozen in place.

  “AHHHHHnnnnnnngggggggnnnnnngggghh!”

  The cry he heard was the most piercing scream of his existence. Sroolik gagged, almost as if the scream were exploding from his own lungs.

  The monster had fallen. He had not noticed the sacking. He’d come crashing through, and now he had to be down there.

  The boy, as if in a dream, began heaving stones and slabs of rock down into the pit, trying to aim at what seemed to be the head of the writhing, screaming shadow below.

  “Annnhhggg. … Ahhhhhhnnnnngggg … annnhhhh … anhh. …”

  He was pitching down small boulders so heavy that when bringing them he’d been able to drag them only a few feet at a time.

  Bending for another rock, Sroolik realized suddenly it was quiet. Only the soft humming of the gnats. Could the dog be trying a trick?

  Holding the stone carefully, remaining ready to bomb it down, Sroolik knelt and peered into the pit’s dusky half-light.

  After a moment the boy rolled over onto his belly, his stomach heaving. He struggled to stop the spasms, but the bitter stuff wretched up despite him. He’d seen corpses shorn of arms, heads, hanging from trees up into which they’d been blasted, but this one was his. He had done it. He tried to blot out the hideous picture. Eyes tightly shut, he still saw Welzel.

  The man lay face up, eyes bulging as if he’d been strangled, his forehead crushed in by a rock. A stake was poking through his shoulder, and around it a black pool was widening. The whole body lay oddly twisted, as if other stakes too must have impaled its back, though they had not pierced clean through.

  For a brief moment he felt a thrill of pride. The most ungodly act a man could perform, and the most difficult, and he had done it.

  Then Sroolik jumped up and frenziedly shoved down the remaining stones, the side branches which hadn’t already fallen in, armfuls of dead leaves, anything at all to hide the sickening sight and bury it forever.

  Clambering down the hill, he decided to leave the gun and return for it late at night.

  The next morning the Sergeant sent him right off to haul more coffins. They were coming in now in great stacks by river barge to be ready for the offensive the soldiers all kept speaking about. All day Sroolik tensely eyed whoever approached the wagon. But through that whole endless day no one asked him about Welzel. Nor the next day. Three such terrifying days passed. It was impossible to believe that not one of the other soldiers knew where Welzel had been sleeping. The sharp-eyed neighbors certainly knew. Welzel had sat outside with his carving half a dozen times as plain as a chimney. But no Germans, his sisters swore, had come by to question the neighbors either. That evening in the tool house with Gunther, who had finally succumbed to Sroolik’s pleas for a lesson on the workings of a rifle, Sroolik heard the Sergeant curse the piggish, dumbheaded papers he was laboring to fill out, and all because of that rabbit-heart of a deserter, Welzel!

  The boy’s first instinct was to thank God, but he just as immediately rejected the idea. Against all the Commandments, he alone had done this thing. He in his own mind had thought of plans. And they had worked. So maybe he could be stronger than soldiers, and smarter too. He alone might be able to protect his sisters and himself.

  Five days later the Germans decamped, moving eastward into Russia. That very afternoon a mad sheep dog, its jowls drooling with pink slaver, bit a woman and a girl who were fetching water at the well. Antipolye’s one street resounded with shrieks, cries, running feet, doors slamming and bolting. Sroolik unwrapped his rifle, walked out with it, and killed the howling creature with his third shot. That same day he and his sisters also made friends with the neighbors, none of whom they’d ever before spoken with.

  With his snares, and the provisions he’d earned and stolen from the departing Germans, they survived the winter. One fine spring morning his mother’s sister Pesya magically appeared, spent a long afternoon and evening crying for their mother, and then the next day set off with them for Brest-Litovsk. Sroolik debated with himself whether or not to show her the rifle, but then thought it best to roll it up in their one blanket. When she asked what he was carrying, he told her it was a toy gun he had carved. She, after all, was only a woman; and what did they know of how men had to fight in this world?

  BOOK 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Potato fields, their growth withered and sere in the autumn chill, stretched grayly, endlessly in the early morning haze on either side of the narrow, bumpy Long Island country road. At seven the two brothers had already been driving westward toward New York for an hour, Morris at the wheel of the five-ton Nash truck, and Izzie sitting alongside, nervously craning his neck, continuously peering in all directions.

  “You’re makin me dizzy,” Morris grumbled.

  “Alevai, that should be our worst this trip.”

  “Yeah? So what could be the worst?”

  Morris had missed the War. He’d never seen a dead man, much less killed one. At twenty-four, four years older than Izzie, a mite taller, and much thicker around the middle, he was a lamb by comparison. With straight brown hair and an almost rouged rosiness to his full cheeks, he looked healthily German or Polish rather than Jewish. His relaxed frame c
ontrasted with his jaw, which was chomping continuously on a wad of gum and every so often blowing a fair-sized bubble with it. Despite his six additional years in America, he spoke a cruder New Yorkese than his brother, never having even attempted the rigors of high school. Izzie, whom he loved, made him uneasy. Why couldn’t those wheels in Iz’s head ever slow down?

  “So they hijack us.” Morris wanted to get to the bottom of this. “So what’s so terrible? We don’ own the stuff.”

  Izzie laughed bitterly to himself at Morris’s blithe assumptions. Then he shuddered. Some favor he’d done his good-as-gold brother, getting him this job. As much of a boon, maybe, as bringing the German home had been to his poor sister.

  Their lives were in the hands of a kill-crazy ape. Last night at the dock in Greenport had been sickening, that baboon Nussie Katz pistol-whipping two pimply local kids maybe eleven years old, whose whole crime had been sneaking out onto the pilings beneath the pier to watch the boats unload. Even worse had been the thick-lipped goon’s walking off with at least ten “hams” which he’d stashed in the Buick touring car.

  Hams were six-bottle packets in pyramidal form, the bottles encased in straw wrappers—in groups of three, two, and one—and then sewed tightly inside burlap with doubled sail twine. Hams took up half the space of the original wood cases, weighed less, were easier to stow in cramped irregularly shaped spaces, and would take more rough ocean treatment. So, easier to smuggle.

  The young mechanic had no moral qualms about Nussie Katz’s lifting of a few quarts of Little Nathan Beckstein’s huge cargo. What were a few quarts to the owner of a bottling plant, a flock of speakeasies, and two big stills out in Jersey? The problem was, wild man Nussie Katz had a swollen head with not much in it. He would never be able to resist sampling the fancy alky—and offering it to the other torpedoes. So that his Buick, the fastest vehicle in the convoy, far and away the most important element in their protection, probably was worthless as the lead scout car. With its thick-skulled occupants less than alert, they could all get their heads blown off.