20

I expected to come back with so much food I’d have to push it one item at a time through the two-brick hole. But all I could find was a jar of fish chunks. As I squeezed back through the hole, the jar fell and broke. I picked up the chunks, brushed off the dirt, ate one, and stuffed the rest into my pockets. I went straight to the Milgroms’.

Uncle Shepsel gave his usual greeting: “Ah, the smelly one.”

It was dark outside, but there was electricity this night. A single lightbulb dangled from a cord in the ceiling. Mrs. Milgrom was on the mattress. Mr. Milgrom was at the one table, seated in the only chair, doing things with his pills and bottles. There was a large purple welt on the side of his neck. It looked like an eggplant.

Janina was laughing.

“What’s funny?” I said.

“You.” She pointed. “You peed yourself.”

I looked down. The front of my pants was soaked. It was the juice from the fish chunks in my pockets. “I have food!” I announced proudly. I pulled the fish chunks from my pockets and put them on the table. Uncle Shepsel picked one up. He sniffed it. “Pickled herring.” I saw Mrs. Milgrom’s head rise from the mattress.

Uncle Shepsel devoured his piece at once. Mr. Milgrom and Janina each grabbed a piece and took it over to Mrs. Milgrom. They laughed, seeing they were both doing the same thing. Mr. Milgrom pulled Janina’s head into his chest. “I’ll see to Mother,” he said.

Janina held her fish chunk up to the lightbulb. The skin on one side was silvery. She turned the chunk over and over, studying it. Then she licked it as if it were a taffy, each side of it. Finally, she bit off a little piece with her front teeth. As she chewed, she closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. It took her a long time to finish it.

There were only chewing sounds as they ate their chunks of pickled herring. Everyone wore coats and hats and scarves, but all had taken off their gloves, the better to feel the fish. Their frozen breaths clouded the waxy smear of light.

When the last chunk was gone, Janina pointed at me. She looked angry. “You didn’t eat.”

I was starting to explain that I had had a chunk before I arrived when the sound of a machine gun peppered the night. It was very near. Then there were screams and thuds and running feet and shouts: “Out! Out!”

Uncle Shepsel stood in the middle of the room and raised his hands and shouted to the ceiling, “This is it! It’s over! This is it!”

“Shut up,” said Mr. Milgrom as he helped his wife up from the mattress. Janina gaped at the door. It was bedlam on the other side.

“Open the door,” said Mr. Milgrom calmly, “before they come in for us.”

Uncle Shepsel continued to scream at the ceiling, “This is it! This is it!”

I was about to open the door when Mr. Milgrom said, “No, wait.” Slumped against one wall was a large, stuffed cloth bag embroidered in black and green designs. Mr. Milgrom reached into the bag and pulled out a blue-and-white armband. He slipped it over my coat sleeve onto my right arm. “I got this for you,” he said.

I opened the door. People were stampeding by, tumbling down the stairs. Screams. Shattering glass. Gunshots.

We made our way down to the ground floor. Janina squeezed my hand. I could feel her trembling. Bright lights flooded the courtyard. I shielded my eyes. Janina nudged closer to me. Voices shrieked out of the blinding lights: “Move! Move! All you filthy sons of Abraham! All you stinking Zionists! All you dirty Jewish pigs! Line up! Line up!”

Lines were forming, like a company of soldiers. I thought: Maybe we’re going to be in a parade. We found places. We stood.

“Silence! Silence! You filthy swine!”

Mr. Milgrom whispered, “Stand straight. Look healthy.”

I heard Mrs. Milgrom groan.

As we were lining up, snow began to fall. The flakes were fat and starry in the blinding lights. “Stand at attention,” Mr. Milgrom whispered. I didn’t pay him much mind. He had no way of knowing how impossible it was for me to stand still. I had never stood still for more than five seconds in my life. Nevertheless, I tried. Mr. Milgrom was on one side of me, Janina on the other. The soldiers screamed. With my new armband, I thought: I am a Jew now. A filthy son of Abraham. They’re screaming at me. I am somebody. I tried to listen well, to hear what they were screaming, but I could not understand much beyond “dirty” and “filthy” and “Jew.”

Something happened up front. The screams got even louder, screechier. I heard a hollow thudding—thock!—as if someone were knocking wood. I leaned to the side, trying to see past the column of people in front of me. Mr. Milgrom jerked me back. “Attention!” I was beginning to get the message: Standing at attention was very important. Perhaps someone up front wasn’t doing it right. I accepted the challenge. You want attention, I’ll give you attention. I had seen many Jackboots stand at attention. I straightened my spine, snapped my heels together, lifted my chin, stared at the back in front of me. I gave them the best attention there ever was. As the screaming went on, I assumed that others were not so good at this as I.

The back I stared at was green. A lady with a green coat. Snow kept falling. Sometimes a flake tickled my nose. I did not twitch. I did not move my eyes. I barely breathed. Flake by flake the green shoulders of the lady turned white.

Somewhere up front a baby began to scream. Then another to the right. Then another. The louder the babies screamed, the brighter the lights.

“Jew dogs!”

“Filthy swine!”

Thock! Thock!

Jackboots and Flops came through the lines, screaming into the people’s faces, poking them with clubs and rifles, spitting in their faces. A Jackboot stopped in front of Mrs. Milgrom. I could see from the corner of my eye. He screamed at her. She fell to the ground. “Get up, Jew dog! Filthy sow! Get up!” he screamed. If he wants her to get up, I thought, why is he kicking and clubbing her? I didn’t understand. At last Mr. Milgrom managed to pull her to her feet.

The Jackboot passed by me and Janina. I think he looked at me, but I could not see his face for the blinding lights behind him. For an instant I felt proud, as if he had pinned a medal on me for standing at attention so well.

When he came to Uncle Shepsel, he growled, “Open your mouth.” I heard Uncle Shepsel give a whimpering “Ohhh.” He must have opened his mouth, for I saw the muzzle of a rifle come forward. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned my head to see. I saw the muzzle go into Uncle Shepsel’s mouth and push. Uncle Shepsel went backward into the lady behind him, who in turn fell back into the man behind her and so forth as the whole column of people toppled over. The Jackboot laughed.

I went back to attention. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

I had known from the start that the green-coated lady in front of me was in trouble. Her attention was very poor. She wavered from side to side, sometimes her head drooped, and her shoulders were not straight at all. When a Jackboot came to her, he must have seen it also. Down came a club. Thock! Then another bash across her chest. The snow went flying from her shoulders into my face. I hoped the Jackboot noticed that I didn’t move.

It wasn’t long before the lady’s shoulders were white again. Her head was drooping all the time now. I could hear her sniveling. The next time a Jackboot came to her, he said, “You stinking sow! You smell like a pig farm!” He clubbed her again, and again the snow flew from her shoulders. Then it seemed all the Jackboots were telling the people how bad they smelled. They were holding their noses. I was shocked. I had thought I was the only one who smelled bad.

I sniffed, and I began to smell it myself. I was aware of tiny yips and whimpers erupting around me. I knew what the smell was, but despite what the Jackboots said, there were really no pigs, and therefore no pig flop, in the courtyard. And then I felt down under my stomach the urge to go, and I understood what was happening. We had been standing there for a very long time, and people were having to go, and there was no place to go but where we were standing. And so people just relieved themselves where they were, and I heard the sad shudders as it ran down their legs and into the snow, and when I couldn’t hold my own any longer I did the same. And even then I remained at such splendid attention I was tempted to call out to the Jackboots, Hey, look at me!

The screaming never stopped. By now people were falling all over the courtyard, falling and staggering to their feet and falling again. It was easy to tell the people who had not fallen: they were the ones with the highest piles of snow on their shoulders and heads. I could now feel the faint weight of the snow on my head. I wondered how it looked. I took even more pains not to move. I didn’t want my snow to fall off.

I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two crests of snow rising on the tops of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I closed my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel of stone, so I could not move.

Next thing I knew my face was in the snow and Mr. Milgrom and Janina were hauling me to my feet. “What happened?” I said.

Mr. Milgrom smacked me. “Quiet. They’ll beat you. You fainted. You’re too stiff. Bend your knees a little bit.”

This was all getting complicated, not to mention very tiring. I was supposed to move but not move. I tried. I bent my knees. Jackboots screamed. Babies screamed. Lights screamed. We stood so long my pants dried out.

When they finally let us go, the sky was turning gray above the rooftops. We lurched across the snow. Mobs stampeded for the bathrooms. There was one on each floor. I myself did not understand bathrooms. I had never used one, never needed one. The world was my bathroom.

I dragged myself up the stairs with the Milgroms. Uncle Shepsel and Mrs. Milgrom performed a groaning duet that grew louder with each step. I followed them into the room. I wanted only to sleep. I collapsed onto the floor.

When I awoke, I thought I was back in the courtyard under the blinding lights, but it was only the sun in the window. And Uncle Shepsel, propped on his elbow, was pointing at me and saying, “Why is he sleeping here? He smells.”

“I regret to inform you,” said Mr. Milgrom, “that you are not a rose garden yourself these days.”

Uncle Shepsel pounded the floor. “He’s not family.”

Mr. Milgrom looked straight at him. “He is now.”