The following day they walk without stopping. But no Village of Fools is found. No Lublin Uplands. No Lublin.
‘Baroch ata Adonai … ’ Elya actually prays for Lublin, the suburbs of Lublin at least. But his prayers are not answered. They encounter nothing and no one. Then suddenly the outlines of buildings appear in the distance. Is it Lublin at last?
No, it’s some sleepy, nearly deserted village not indicated on Elya’s map. No marketplace, not many houses, few people. Nothing but the smell of burning feathers.
That night they choose another campsite and Elya spends another sleepless night. Then they’re on the road again. How can this be? They’ve been walking for days. Only 102 kilometres from Mezritsh, Lublin has been harder to find than King Solomon’s worm. Ignoring the flattened worms he sees, or those shrivelling in the heat, Ziv is still searching for this stone-ingesting marvel. Perhaps it’s all that’s keeping him going.
It’s still early. Back home in Mezritsh, morning fires are just being kindled. On Szmulowizna Street, Libka’s father is lighting his first cigarette of the day. Occasionally, Libka appears to Elya as if in a dream and he remembers the last time they were together before he set off to seek his fortune on the road to Lublin. Elya, in a clean shirt, hair carefully combed and dressed with oil, sits beside Libka on the banks of the Krzna River in Mezritsh, eating prunes. The shore is lined with birch trees, evergreens beyond. Big frogs croak in the sandy shallows, finger frogs beneath the bushes. In the thickets, birds whistle. This could be a fairy tale except for the mud, dried hard this time of year and turned to dust.
Elya brags about his heavy backpack. Not a girl’s pack. A proper pack. He shows Libka his precious map and points out the route.
‘So far,’ she marvels, but with a hint of reproach.
‘It’s difficult to get ahead unless you go on the road,’ he explains cautiously.
Then he shows her his account book and tells her about the paintbrushes he will sell, how they are constructed and so forth.
She sinks into his words, a sweet, eager expression on her face.
‘Under the ferrule, a little pocket holds the paint.’
‘Ferrule,’ she silently mouths.
They’ve never been alone together. They ought not to be alone tonight. But since Elya is leaving, they’ve been allowed. A long silence grows longer. He has to say something. A joke? No, not a joke. His shoulder bumps her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ he says. Then she asks for another prune.
‘Zay azoy gut,’ she says, holding out her small hand.
He wonders if she will come with him to America one day or if he should send for her once he’s established like many men do. Should he even mention it now? It’s on the tip of his tongue to say something. But he stops himself. What if she doesn’t want to leave Mezritsh? He tries anyway. ‘Sometimes,’ he begins, ‘I have a longing …'
She looks at him intensely.
‘A longing,’ he starts again, ‘ … for elsewhere.’
‘Elsewhere?’ This is not what she expects to hear.
He decides not to press the point but to wait and see.
They laugh about her friend Shayna.
‘Shayna wants to marry you.’
‘Really?’
‘She hates me.’
‘Don’t say that.’
As they sit staring out across the river, the sky slowly darkens above the treetops on the opposite shore. Libka will remember this evening for the rest of her short life. ‘It’s uncomfortable at home,’ she stammers. ‘Too many sisters. Not enough beds. My uncle … ’ she laughs. Elya laughs too. But what she’s attempting to tell him isn’t a laughing matter. She eats her prune, delicately sucking the pit, then carefully spitting it into her hand and dropping it on the ground.
With the toe of his shoe, Elya guides it closer and closer, and when he thinks she isn’t looking, bends down, picks it up and puts it in his pocket. Something that has been in her mouth, he feels almost faint. There isn’t much more time. Soon Libka will set off for home. Her father, smoking one cigarette after another, is already waiting for her in front of their house that no longer stands on swampy Szmulowizna Street, the poorest street in Mezritsh.
Solemnly, Elya walks Libka home, without drawing her close or even putting an arm lightly around her shoulders. What’s wrong with him? She’s beautiful and willing. A cattle car is just pulling out of Mezritsh Station. They both hold their noses laughing. Elya is vaguely embarrassed by the smell. He stops walking. She stops walking. He turns towards her, pecks her on the cheek.
‘I won’t tell,’ she whispers.
But he’s already moving away. Then he turns back. ‘Libka,’ he murmurs, holding out his hand. When she takes it, instead of caressing her, he practises his new handshake, a money handshake such as businessmen and merchants employ.
Shortly after Elya goes on the road, Libka’s house will catch fire. While her mother’s back is turned, a spark will jump from the brazier on which she cooks and into a barrel filled with ropes; or maybe her father, smoking one cigarette after another, will throw a butt aside before properly extinguishing it; or her bachelor uncle will be carelessly burning grain to ferment his own alcohol; or a candle will be knocked over by her lively sisters, and all Elya’s dreams of Libka will be reduced to flying cinders.
It is said that a huge cloud of ash covered the whole of Szmulowizna Street after the fire, like a coat of grey fur. But of course, on this night, when Elya and Libka part so chastely, nothing’s happened yet and the Mezritsher Fire Brigade have got their feet up, eating kreplach, which are dumplings.
Only Libka’s uncle survives.
In Mezritsh, the gossips will say that Elya’s abandoned fiancée, dosed with St John’s wort for sadness, set fire to the house herself.
A tisheleh, a benkele, a baleboosteh bet sich zu zein.
This is all Libka ever wanted.
Perhaps it was jealous Shayna who set the fire.
Meanwhile, Elya, with no Lublin, hates his friends. He has no friends. Certainly not Ziv, or Kiva. He doesn’t need friends. The Uncle has no friends. Only creditors.
Kiva, with no pillow (Ziv hasn’t returned it), hates the road; the side of the road; the fields beyond the road; his big pupik; the shameful things he has done (she’s his sister, his sister!) and whatever punishment Ziv dishes out, he deserves. But not so hard!
Ziv, with no beard, a maggoty knapsack and disintegrating shoes, hates pale-faced, weaker boys; the Tsar who dissolved the second Duma; and farkakta rich men with their camels. He fantasises about the emptying of Lubliner Street and the handing over of fur coats, gold watches, fine furniture. A great storm is coming that will sweep through rich men’s houses and carry everything away. He also hates his cousin Kiva who is nearly rich, and Elya, who is not rich but wants to be.
One day he will set their beards on fire.
There are vapours through the night and heat lightning. How many days have they been on the road? They’ve lost count. It’s overcast. Still very hot. Soon the weather must break. The empty sky takes on a white appearance and leaves hang motionless on the trees.
Waiting for Kiva and Ziv to rouse themselves in the morning, Elya packs and repacks his knapsack. Crapsack, Ziv calls it. Then Elya takes out his notebook again. ‘Slept ill,’ he writes. Perhaps he will not sleep until they reach Lublin. But then, Lublin sleep! He gets up, lifts his tarp and squashes it into his crapsack without folding.
‘I like the way you folded that.’ The Uncle comes up behind him. Then Elya must do it again. Elya does not need to check their provisions because there are no provisions. Everything squandered. Nothing left. They will have to find food somewhere.
After Kiva rises, they sit in silence, watching Ziv sleep. How could a person sleep so much?
‘Ziv!’ Elya hollers. ‘Get the fuck up.’
Kiva stares at Elya in dismay.
Ziv opens one eye.
‘Get up.’ Elya prods him with his foot, not gently.
‘You mean now?’
‘I’m leaving,’ says Elya, ‘with or without you.’
All he needs to do is put on his shoes.
Then Ziv’s dressed and ready in no time.
Ziv dressed and ready? What gives?
‘Now we’re waiting for you,’ Ziv complains, while Elya unpacks his backpack and unrolls his bedroll looking for his shoes.
‘I haven’t seen them,’ Ziv turns to Kiva. ‘Have you?’
‘My father made those shoes,’ Elya stirs the campfire ashes with the fallen branch of a tree. Nothing there. Heads off to search the lake. Comes back empty-handed.
‘You’ll have to wrap your feet in rags,’ Ziv calls out to him. ‘Wait a minute. Are these yours?’ He lifts Elya’s shoes from the long grass. ‘Right here all along.’
Elya glares at him. ‘If you’ve damaged them …'
‘Me? I’m admiring them.’ Ziv squeezes the toes as if to assess the quality of the leather. Ziv’s own shoes are in tatters, but Kiva has a spare pair.
‘You brought two pairs of shoes?’
‘Three. Four, if you count my slippers.’
Bursting with indignation, Ziv tries on Kiva’s spare shoes. ‘They pinch,’ he complains. ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
Meanwhile, repacking his bedroll, Elya finds his lost shovel. ‘A miracle,’ he cries out. Is it really his shovel?
It is!
‘Who put it there?’ Ziv asks with a bewildered smile.
‘Adoshem?’ suggests Kiva.
‘Demons,’ Ziv opines.
Ziv, thinks Elya.
It’s another day. A new beginning. Thinking their journey almost over, Elya is actually hopeful, hopeful and nostalgic. ‘These are the best of times. Days we will never forget,’ he says.
‘Although we might try,’ says Ziv.
‘Try and try,’ says Kiva. There’s dried blood around his swollen nose and black and blue marks on his arms. He looks down the road and grimaces.
‘Don’t worry,’ Elya reassures him. ‘There are doctors in Lublin who specialise in noses, broken, ill-shaped, or Jewish.’
On the road, it is hotter, closer. Beneath a sultry sky, the landscape, a flat monotonous plain covered with rough dry grass, interests no one. Ziv and Elya strip to the waist. Even Kiva takes off his overshirt. He drops it. Then picks it up. Dropping things is a sure sign that a fit is coming. Soon he’ll be falling to the ground right in front of his friends, his arms and legs going in all directions.
A newly mowed field is hazy in the overcast sunlight, buzzing with insects and the birds that feed on them. They pass a church, its doors open wide. ‘Don’t look,’ Kiva calls out. ‘You’ll go blind.’
Too late. They’ve looked. Elya cannot identify anything he sees inside. ‘Now we’re in for it,’ Kiva predicts. ‘I saw a lamb,’ he cries in dismay, ‘with a crook between its legs.’
Up ahead, the road forks. Elya wants to go right. But a large red-eyed dog is barring their way. When it sees them, the dog begins to growl low down in its throat, then snaps and snarls aggressively. When Ziv approaches the animal, Kiva opens his mouth, screams, then starts to cough.
‘It’s just a dog.’
Der hundt barks wildly at Ziv, foaming at the mouth.
Ziv backs away.
Suddenly there’s a long, sharp whistle from a nearby field and the big farm dog turns and runs off towards the sound.
A large, sandy marketplace, in a small Polish village not on Elya’s map, looks promising. They decide to stop and set up their wares. They open their suitcase and display their paintbrushes, which come in many shapes and sizes. A small brush for window frames, sashes and sills; a medium-sized brush for doors and cabinets; a large brush for walls. ‘Dzien dobry,’ Elya greets every potential customer. ‘A new brush will make painting easier. Even a child could do it,’ he cries in a mixture of Yiddish and bad Polish, attracting a crowd. ‘I use these brushes myself. Good clean brushes. No broken bristles. Ideal for the house painter. Long-lasting in both square and tapered versions. Well-balanced. Well-priced. Quality-controlled with a special seal of approval from a licensed brush inspector.’ (This is untrue but sounds good.) ‘Durable, all-purpose brushes. Made in Mezritsh. Home of the bristle.’
‘The brush for Everyman,’ Ziv puts in.
‘A newly painted wall for the Jewish holidays,’ Kiva suggests. But those who listen are not Jews. ‘Buy one, get one half price,’ Elya adds. ‘OK. Buy two, get one free. Not many left. Everything must go. I can’t shlep brushes back to Mezritsh,’ he exclaims.
They sell not one paintbrush. So, not the Village of Fools after all, where nebachs will buy anything. Maybe the Village of the Dead, where no Mezritsher merchant has ever made a sale. The trestle they have rented, in the only space available, stands under a sign reading ‘SWÓJ DLA SWEGO’.
What could that mean? Only Ziv knows and he’s nottelling.
Soon they’re on the parched road to Lublin again. They have not walked very far when they encounter a distinctive smell. Stewed prunes and pastry. Elya looks around in dismay. Could there be two Prune Towns? This time Kiva takes no notice. He’s lost his appetite. But Elya’s worried. Are they walking in circles? He struggles to stay calm. But fear enters his heart. Where’s the Village of Fools and why’s it taking so long to reach Lublin?
‘Are we almost there?’ Kiva asks.
Dogs flicker between the trees.
Ziv shakes a stick at a red-eyed mongrel similar to one they’ve seen before. Every direction, and every dog, looks the same. ‘Where are we?’ Elya wants to ask, but his stupid pride won’t let him. More dogs. More trees. Then no trees. Or dogs. Only horse fields and cow fields as far as the eye can see.
‘Are we there yet?’ asks Kiva.
Ziv hails an old-fashioned pedlar, his wares strapped to his back, his feet wrapped in rags. ‘Vas mahkhsta?’ Ziv enquires. ‘Is this the road to Lublin?’
‘Lublin?’ The man looks confused. ‘Never heard of it.’
Could this be Ziv’s father?
Elya hurries Ziv on. That type, Elya’s thinking, gives our esteemed profession a bad name.
‘I just wanted to say hello,’ Ziv protests.
‘We’re already late.’
‘How much longer?’ asks Kiva.
A line of blind schnorrers with upturned eyelids is chanced upon next, shuffling along. The foremost blind beggar, led by a child reciting blessings, is tall and thin with pointy ears like Ziv’s, sharp teeth like Ziv’s, Ziv’s clever vulpine expression, and a wispy beard, if you could call it a beard. Perhaps this is Ziv’s father.
‘Tata?’
When Elya pulls him away, Ziv bristles. ‘What’s happened to you Elya? He looked a good fellow.’ And before he can stop him, Ziv thrusts his hand inside the purse Elya carries around his waist, extracts a coin, runs after the beggar and gives it to him.
Later, Elya will find that the coin Ziv has given the beggar is his lucky pfennig.
Does he want Ziv dead? Not really dead, he decides, just disappeared, rounded up, taken away.
Kiva watches miserably as his friends argue. ‘Let’s have a song,’ he proposes, and bursts into Ein Keloheinu, a rousing Jewish hymn. Soon they are all singing lustily as they march down the road.
‘Ein Keloheinu, Ein Kadoneinu,
Ein k’malkeinu, Ein K’moshieinu.’
They’re just boys after all.