Jim Shepard - The Book of Aron

For a time afterwards whenever I closed my eyes I saw him on the street. I couldn’t sleep at night, such strange thoughts kept coming into my head. I woke with blood in my mouth and my mother said it looked like I’d bitten my tongue.

He was different after that and didn’t go back to work for a few days. He sat at the kitchen table by the window with his back to everyone holding a wet cloth to his head and nursing a cup of tea my mother made him. She said it was all right and that we just needed to give him some room. He looked at me sometimes as if the Germans had kicked the courage out of both of us. When Boris and I left the apartment and I said goodbye, he gave a little wave.

IN JUNE IT GOT SO HOT NO ONE COULD SLEEP. THEN on the one night it got cooler the Germans decided to move their whole army past our apartment.

All night tanks ground through the streets and over the Vistula bridge. Trucks thundered along behind them. We all went to the window to watch; you couldn’t rest anyway. The whole apartment shook and anything that was loose jingled and rattled. We had to take our teacups down from the shelf. Every few hours my mother exclaimed about how long it was going on. At first my father tried to stay in bed but even he had to get up after a while. Once the sun came up all of us except my mother went down to the sidewalk to get a better view.

The procession went on until noon. All the Germans in Germany were being trucked through to somewhere. Boris’s father said that never in his life had he seen such machines as the Germans had, but I could barely hear him because of the noise. Soldiers hung off everything everywhere. No one could cross the street. A stray dog tried it at a run and almost lost its tail.

All sorts of German slogans were painted in white on the tanks’ sides. The one we saw most often was STALIN, WIR KOMMEN.

Some of the smaller kids got excited by the huge trucks that were pulling gigantic cannons. The diesel exhaust was dark brown and gave us all headaches, so we went back inside.

That night we heard explosions in the city and the next morning were told that the Russians had bombed Warsaw. Bombs had fallen on Okęcie, Teatralny Square, and a trolley near the Kierbedź Bridge, killing everyone on board.

“Why do you keep going on about your mother?” Boris asked later that morning. “Do you think we all want to hear about your mother? Don’t we all have mothers to worry about?”

“I certainly have to worry about mine,” Adina agreed.

The streets were full of sick people and everyone said the typhus was still spreading. My father had told my mother that God drowned the mangy to save the rest of the flock and my mother had slapped him. I’d told the gang about it. “And your father just let her slap him?” Boris asked. He thought even the typhus might bring us some business and again he turned out to be right when Lejkin came to my apartment and said the Service was recruiting a special unit that would hang disinfection and quarantine signs for extra ration cards. He let me bring along the whole group and we hung signs for three days. “How did he come to find you?” Zofia wanted to know while we were hanging one over a disinfection station.

“Maybe he likes me,” I told her.

“No one likes you,” Boris said.

“He makes a good point,” Adina said.

I used my extra cards to buy rye flour, kasha, and potatoes. Boris brought a plateful of meat soup home for each member of his family.

My mother checked us all for rashes. She rubbed my hand raw to recheck a spot she was anxious about. “The Germans threw us all on top of one another and turned loose the epidemic they were trying to prevent,” she said.

“Won’t they be shocked to hear that,” my father told her.

Zofia’s mother brought Salcia to the hospital for a blood infection and was told that none of the hospitals had room any longer for other kinds of sick people. All four were now only epidemic hospitals. She said that her father was heartbroken because both of the Brysz girls had died in the Stawki hospital.

“Who are the Brysz girls?” I asked, and she reminded me. “Now I remember,” I told her.

“Sh’maya thinks only of himself,” she said, and Boris and Lutek laughed.

“Aron,” I said. “Aron thinks only of himself.”

“Don’t you ever think about anyone else?” she asked. “In you Moses dies of thirst and the tablets turn to sand.”

“What does that mean?” I wanted to know.

“It’s something my grandfather used to say,” she said. “When someone disappointed him.”

“What did I do?” I said.

“You disappointed her,” Boris explained.

“What does everyone understand that I don’t?” I said. I was tired of being the one that no one cared about. Especially her. I wanted to hit someone.

“You keep acting as though everything is normal,” Zofia said.

“Why do you say that about me and not the others?” I asked.

“Oh, stop pestering me,” she said.

“I’m not pestering you,” I told her.

“And go wash yourself,” she said, then took Adina’s hand and left.

SOMEONE POUNDED ON OUR DOOR THE NEXT MORNING before it was fully light. My mother had to step over me in the hallway to see who it was. When she opened the door a German said to her, “I need twenty people.” His Polish was lousy but we understood him. He looked at us on the floor and then stepped over us and searched the apartment. He switched to German in the bedrooms, saying “Raus, raus.” He took my father and brothers and Boris’s father out into the hall with him. Before they shut the door we could see a yellow policeman out there too. They talked and my mother went from the door to the stove to the door again and then my father came back in and said, “They told us we’re all going into a labor battalion for a few days and that everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to be working and we’re going to be fed.”

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no,” my mother said, and Boris shouted for someone to shut the door, that there was a draft.

“Stop,” my father told her. “At least with the Germans we know we’ll get a noontime meal. A little hot soup or something.” She argued with him but he told her the work detail was good news since those coming back could smuggle food with them. He kissed her and bent down and kissed me. He looked into my eyes like he was going to say something, then stood up and stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind him.

Afterwards my mother looked at us like disaster was coming out of the walls. “Get her out of here,” Boris’s mother finally told me. “I’ll finish the cleaning. Go stand in line somewhere,” she told my mother, and pulled the rag from her hands. “Do something to feed your family.”

My mother sat at the kitchen table with her palms over her face. “Come on,” I told her. “There’s no point in waiting around with folded hands.”

This was one of her sayings and it got her to her feet. She found her hat and bag and led me out the door.

The shops on Gęsia were empty and the cartons on display in the windows were labeled EMPTY BOXES. A woman who was sweeping rubbish back and forth outside one of the shops with an old straw broom told her some meat was being brought in on Grzybowska from one of the slaughterhouses later that morning, so we walked all the way over there.

On Dzielna we passed a crowd around two women ladling out gray milk from a dirty can. My mother read their cardboard sign and then led me away, saying they were asking too much.

She talked to herself while she walked. She said that it didn’t cost us a thing to look. She said maybe they’d put the horsemeat in vinegar and water so it would soften up.