A Boy Is Not a Bird Read online

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy says. “Everyone is homesick at first. When my grandmother came to live with us, she was homesick for ages. Then one day she looked out of the window and said, ‘I’m not homesick anymore. You are where you are.’”

  6

  Minus Numbers

  Here is something interesting. You can have a number, like 2, but you can also have a number that is minus 2. Comrade Minsky taught us that.

  What does minus 2 mean? I think it’s more an idea than a number.

  And you can actually subtract and add negative numbers!

  minus 2 + minus 3 = minus 5

  It makes sense. If I lose two marbles to Max, and then I lose another three, I’ve lost five altogether. Minus is something you had but lost. It only exists in the past.

  I never knew arithmetic had a past and a present.

  Losing marbles is what I’m doing at the moment. Max and I are shooting marbles in his front garden and he’s mostly winning.

  We’re both in a good mood. We like our new school and we like our new teacher.

  Comrade Minsky felt much better once he was teaching us arithmetic. He said, “What clever children you are!” He seemed very happy about that.

  Of course, not everyone in the class is clever. But he doesn’t know that yet.

  Suddenly, in the middle of our game, I sense that we’re not alone. I’ve been so absorbed in trying to hold on to my best marble — the one that looks like spiraling stardust — that I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, and neither did Max.

  We both look up at the same moment and see my mother.

  What’s she doing here? I get the feeling she’s been watching us for a while. Normally she interrupts our games without a second thought.

  Now that I’ve spotted her, she smiles and says, “Darling, I just spoke to Max’s mother and asked her if you could sleep here tonight. I’m afraid we have to move. Our poor old house is being borrowed for a while. Not forever. Just for now. The Russians need it for their bank.”

  Are my ears playing tricks on me? How can our house not be our house anymore? How can it be a bank? It doesn’t look anything like a bank. It’s a house!

  My mother sits down on the crate that was our ship to Canada last week. She looks tired and her eyes are red.

  “It’s not just us. They’ve taken over lots of houses.”

  “But where will we live?”

  “They’re letting us stay in Mr. Jacobson’s apartment, so we’ll still have the same garden. Isn’t that wonderful? Mr. Jacobson recently left town so it has all worked out.”

  Bruno the Bald is gone? Without even saying goodbye? He’s lived in the side apartment of our house since before I was born. The low, arched door to his place always made me think of tales of magicians in the Black Forest. When Mr. Jacobson was away at work and Lana was washing his floors, I’d peek inside, half-expecting to discover a book of spells.

  “We were very lucky,” Mama continues. “We were given two hours to pack, and I managed to rescue all your things, darling. I’ve put them away for safekeeping. I took all our clothes, too, and the silver candlesticks.”

  I’m standing next to her and she reaches out and draws her arm around my waist. Right in front of Max! I pull away immediately. Luckily, Max’s mother also embarrasses him with hugs and kisses when I’m around. Still. You have to draw the line somewhere.

  “Safekeeping where?” I ask, hoping I haven’t hurt her feelings.

  My mother seems barely to have noticed. “Don’t worry, Aunt Dora is looking after everything,” she says, staring out at the fields. Her eyes glaze over as if she’s forgotten where she is.

  She comes out of her trance with a start and bounces up from the crate.

  “I did manage to keep Clop-Clop for you,” she announces proudly.

  My heart sinks. Clop-Clop, my little wooden horse? That’s the only thing that’s not in storage?

  Apart from my games and puzzles, I had three shelves of nature treasures: rocks, snakeskins, seashells, feathers, bird eggshells, a honeycomb, a piece of driftwood that looked like Albert Einstein …

  And what about my books? Emil and the Detectives, my Karl May collection, Ancient Myths and Legends — are they all gone?

  I’m afraid to ask.

  My mother reaches out to hug me again but stops herself and ruffles my hair instead. She was paying attention after all. Poor Mama!

  “And, oh, Natt, guess what else? I almost forgot. They let us keep your bike. They’ve been taking bikes left and right for the army, but they let us keep yours. I expect it’s too small for them.”

  So I’m supposed to be in raptures because I’m allowed to keep my own bike! Is this what war means? That you have to be grateful for smaller and smaller things? Any minute now I’ll be expected to jump for joy because I don’t have to sleep on a haystack.

  Before Mama leaves, she hands Max a paper bag.

  “That’s for your mother,” she says. Then she unlatches the gate, waves goodbye and hurries off. I feel a bit guilty, because I’m relieved that she’s gone.

  “What did one tricycle say to the other tricycle?” Max asks, to cheer me up.

  But I’m not in the mood.

  I don’t have to look in the bag my mother gave Max to know what’s inside. I can tell by the sweet almond smell that it’s mandel bread. I’m not sure why it’s called bread when it’s actually a cookie. Maybe because each cookie is shaped like a tiny slice of bread.

  I’m doing my best not to dig in right away, but Max beats me to it.

  “Sorry about your house,” Max says between mouthfuls. “Everything’s gone topsy-turvy. One thing on top of another. My brother says the surreal is becoming real.”

  I look down at the marbles. They’re lying motionless on the ground, waiting for us to shoot them out of the ring. The marbles are exactly where they were before my mother interrupted our game. Nothing has changed for them. War doesn’t affect marbles.

  I say, “If the house is minus one, and Bruno the Bald is minus one, together that makes minus two.”

  “But think of it this way,” Max replies. “No more Iron Guard. That’s plus a million. And no more Mrs. Bubu. That’s plus a billion.”

  I can’t help smiling. “Even though she was such a teeny-tiny peewee of a pipsqueak,” I add, and we both roar with laughter. Mrs. Bubu wasn’t much taller than me, and we were always shaking our heads at how such a small person could spew out so much evil.

  Sleepovers with Max are usually crowded, with four of us in the big bed (actually a single and a double bed pushed together), but Max’s two older brothers, David and Michael, are away. Michael is a really good artist, and the bedroom walls are covered with drawings of places, people and, in amazing detail, spiders spinning their webs. He has a thing about spiders.

  Before we fall asleep, Max says, “I wish you had one of your Montreal letters here.”

  He means letters from my relatives. Whenever one arrives, Max and I devour every word. We try to imagine the tall buildings and the motor cars tearing up and down the crowded streets. And a single store that takes up an entire block, where you can walk for hours looking at bicycles, radios, gramophones, towers of chocolates, hundreds of magazines, every type of boot and shoe, and a thousand different games.

  “I remember some things by heart,” I say. “One building is twenty-six stories and —”

  “Natt, listen.” Max sounds serious, which is unusual for him. Very unusual. “I wish we were in Montreal this minute. Not because of the stores or the chocolates. But because the war is going to reach us soon.”

  “It will be okay,” I tell him. “Mama says war is like a dog barking at a flock of birds who are sitting quietly on a haystack. The birds fly away, but then when the war ends, they come back to where they were.”

  “But what will happen in bet
ween? Where are David and Michael? Why did they leave in such a hurry? Why is everyone trying to sell their valuable things?”

  People are selling their things? Well, that’s news to me.

  And you’d think I’d be the first to know, because most of the buying and selling takes place in a big empty field right next to our house. Every Tuesday and Thursday farmers and merchants arrive with their produce and goods piled high on wagons. The merchants bring toys, books, clothes, furniture and even, sometimes, a new invention, like sunglasses for kids.

  Before the Russians changed our schedule, we’d be restless on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. We wanted to leave Hebrew school early so we’d have more time at the market. We’d try every excuse — headache, toothache, stomach ache, blurry vision, dizziness and, Max’s favorite, “cloudy brain” — until finally Mr. Elias gave up and let us out at 10:00 a.m. instead of 11:00. That gave us two hours to explore and maybe pick up a treat.

  “I thought the market was canceled last week,” I say.

  Max punches his pillow. I can tell he’s worried about his brothers. Are they hiding? And if so, why?

  “The grown-ups told us that the market closed down,” he says, lowering his voice. “But it wasn’t true. They didn’t want us to go, because everyone is frantically trying to sell what they own. They say the market is going to be outlawed any day now, and they desperately need money, since the Russians are taking everything. I heard my parents talking about it.”

  Is that why my mother specifically told me to stay with Max after school last Tuesday and Thursday?

  “If the war comes here,” I say, “we have to be heroes.”

  Max doesn’t answer. I’m not sure he heard me.

  I look out of the bedroom window. I can see the Big Dipper and the North Star. The stars are exactly where they were last night and where they’ll be tomorrow. They seem to be telling me that everything will be fine, fine, fine — like the old woman who tells your fortune at the market. Max and I used to eavesdrop on her through the back flaps of her tent. She’d peer into a crystal ball and predict wonderful things. She’s the one who told Lana she was going to marry a rich man in the United States and have an enormous wedding cake. A few times the old woman’s predictions made us laugh so hard that we had to run off before we were caught — like the time she told the Goat Man he’d find a treasure if he took a bath and buried his old clothes.

  “What did one tricycle say to the other tricycle?” I ask Max. But he’s already asleep.

  7

  Stormy Weather

  Bruno the Bald’s apartment is cozy (no book of spells) but it only has two rooms: a living room with a kitchen in the corner, and a tiny bedroom with a high narrow bed. So high you need a footstool to climb into it.

  Mama said she’ll look for something better, but in the meantime she asked me where I want to sleep. It makes no difference to me, so I told her I was fine with the two-seater in the living room. Papa can either squeeze in with her or sleep on a straw mat on the floor.

  I can sleep anywhere. I once dozed off on a sack of potatoes in the shed. My parents were calling out my name, searching up and down, going mad with worry, but I didn’t hear a thing. I was snoring away, dreaming about potato pancakes.

  Speaking of food, Mama says we’re going to eat supper at Aunt Dora’s tonight. I don’t say anything, but I’m secretly glad. I’ve heard more than one person refer to Dora as a culinary genius, and I have to agree.

  “Where’s Lana?” I ask. I haven’t seen her since we moved out of the house.

  “She had to go home,” my mother replies. “But she’ll visit as often as she can.”

  I must be hungrier than usual, because my first thought is how much I’m going to miss Lana’s Friday treat — a lima-bean and vegetable dish she calls fasoli. She’s the only one who knows how to make it.

  It occurs to me that Olek and Zoomie have also vanished. As a matter of fact, all the men who helped my father with his grain business are gone. I decide not to say anything about it.

  “Before we leave for Dora’s, I have something to tell you,” Mama says. “I’m afraid Hebrew schools aren’t allowed anymore.”

  “Not allowed? Why not?”

  Our Hebrew classes are more like club meetings than lessons. We adore Mr. Elias. We like his pretty wife, Cecilia, too. Halfway through the morning, she enters the room with a tray of thick slices of buttered bread and mugs of warm cocoa. We each get one mug and two slices of bread.

  Mostly we learn Hebrew, which no one spoke in their daily life for hundreds of years — not since ancient times. But now it’s being revived. We subscribe to a kids’ magazine in Hebrew, and when it arrives we go over it page by page. We even wrote to the magazine last year and they wrote back, promising to publish our letter when our turn came. The letters are next to the joke page.

  Uzi: Why do you wear glasses while you sleep?

  Buzi: So I can see my dreams more clearly.

  A boy in Tel Aviv to his friend: Hey, let’s go to the cinema.

  His friend: I don’t have time, I have to help my dad do my homework.

  Apart from Hebrew, we learn about the idea of a homeland for the Jews. This homeland is going to be in Palestine. Or at least that’s the plan. It’s not clear if it’s going to work out.

  We don’t learn religion, though sometimes we discuss Bible stories. For example, should you kill someone who is beating a slave and bury him in the sand? (Max says yes, I say no.)

  “The churches are closing down, too,” my mother says. “For once it’s not just the Jews.”

  She forces herself to laugh. It’s a bit spooky, that type of fake laugh, especially when it’s your mother who’s putting on an act.

  “But,” she continues, “there are going to be secret classes three evenings a week. It’s up to you whether you want to go.”

  So Hebrew school is not completely over! I have to admit that the idea of a secret school is kind of exciting.

  “What are other kids doing?” I ask.

  “Most are going, though not Max. His parents have five children, and a lot to think about right now.”

  Hebrew school without Max! It won’t be nearly as much fun. Still, if other kids are going, I want to go, too. I can keep a secret.

  “I definitely want to go,” I say, “but is it okay if I don’t go to every class?”

  My mother bursts out laughing. This time her laugh is genuine.

  On the way to Dora’s, my mother says, “You know, Natt, one very lucky thing is that the Russians like Aunt Dora and Uncle Isaac.”

  “Don’t they like everyone?” I ask. “Don’t they like us?”

  My mother says, “Well, let’s see …” Which means she’s thinking of an answer.

  Finally, she says, “You could say that they trust Uncle Isaac more than other people. When he was at university, he published an essay that impressed the Russians.”

  “Did he write about Karl Marx?” In school the walls are covered with posters of Marx, Lenin and Engels, fathers of the Communist Revolution. My favorite is Karl Marx. I like his wild hair and huge beard. And I like the fearsome way he puts things. Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains! Workers of the world, unite!

  “Actually, Uncle Isaac’s essay was about the peasants’ revolt in England in the Middle Ages.” My mother chuckles. “By some miracle, it ended up on a list of revolutionary writings. In times of change, you want to be in the good books of whoever is in power.”

  As soon as we reach Dora’s house, I see Papa walking toward us.

  I run over and he takes my hand. I’ve missed him. He’s been coming home after I’m asleep and leaving before I’m awake. He has swollen glands and a bit of a fever, but he says he can’t stay at home because there’s too much to attend to. I’m worried about him.

  Supper at Aunt Dora’s is a little
disappointing. She couldn’t make any of her usual dishes, as there was a problem “acquiring the ingredients.” Instead she’s prepared stuffed peppers and a big pot of barley and carrot soup. That’s it for the main course, apart from bread.

  But dessert — vanilla pudding — is as mouth-watering as usual.

  “How’s school these days?” my aunt asks me.

  “Much better than before,” I tell her. “Comrade Minsky is reading War and Peace to the class.”

  My aunt and uncle are astonished. “In Russian?” they both ask. People in our family often say the same thing at the same time. I’m used to it.

  “Yes, though he’s more like telling us the story. He’s a Jew, I think. I caught him listening when Lucy was talking to me in Yiddish, and I could tell he understood.”

  “I met him at the pharmacy,” Uncle Isaac says. “He struck me as a very nice man. He told me a movie projector is coming to town.”

  My cousins, Faigie and Ottilie, practically fall out of their chairs with excitement. I’m praying my mother won’t tell them the story of the train. She looks at me, and I shake my head. To my relief, she understands.

  After supper, I join Faigie and Ottilie in their room. They’re a few years older than me, and all they ever want to do is dress up and pretend they’re cabaret performers while I, the audience, sit on a chair and watch them. It’s boring.

  Today is no exception. Faigie and Ottilie open their costume chest and pull out Japanese fans, glittery shawls, decorated hats, grown-up shoes. They twirl their skirts and flap their fans. Then they sit on chairs that are facing the wrong way, Marlene Dietrich style, and sing one of their favorites, “Stormy Weather” in German. Ohne dich, without you …

  Without me is right. Unfortunately, my cousins’ singing is the kind that makes dogs howl. I mumble some excuse and slip away. Maybe Aunt Dora will offer me another bowl of pudding.

  To my surprise, the door to the kitchen is pulled to — not all the way, but almost. There’s a tiny gap, and through it I hear the grown-ups whispering. I can’t hear much at first, because my cousins are screeching away, but when they take a break to change costumes, I pick up a few words.