A Boy Is Not a Ghost Read online

  She snips off three of the pouches with nail scissors and extracts a gold wedding band, a pair of emerald earrings and a diamond ring with two rubies on either side.

  “Please take this,” she says, trying to hand the wedding band to Irena. “For all your help.”

  But Irena shakes her head. “I didn’t do anything,” she insists.

  Felicia turns to me. “Natt, if your mama agrees, will you come with me tonight? You won’t arouse suspicion, and I’ll need someone to hand over the bribe once I’m gone.”

  Kids don’t really get into trouble with the guards, even when we misbehave. But I can see that my mother is terrified.

  I look at Elias, and he smiles and nods.

  “Sure,” I say, pretending not to be as terrified as my mother.

  “Of course,” Mama says.

  She’s pretending, too.

  I spend the evening playing with my friends. We make believe that we’re animals in the wild and we have to guess which animal. Then we make believe that we’re Emil and his detectives and that we’re on a secret mission. But that only reminds me of my own secret mission, and I’m relieved when the adults tell us it’s dinnertime.

  I return to our little group. For the first time since we left home, I’m not hungry. Usually I have to force myself not to wolf down whatever food is available, even if it’s just black bread.

  But I’m too nervous to eat.

  At nine o’clock we settle down for the night. Even though it’s still warm out, I’m shivering under my down quilt. I begin to think of everything that can go wrong. The guards catch Felicia, take away her baby and send her to the Gulag. Or they arrest Mama because her son tried to help someone escape . . .

  I tell my heart to slow down, but it won’t listen. I’ve been embarrassed all my life by how easily I get scared, but now I realize that until tonight I didn’t really know what fear was.

  I try to go over our plan in my mind. Not that there’s much to it. We just have to walk together to the toilet cabin and then Felicia will disappear with her baby and I’ll walk back alone.

  That’s when I have to approach the night guard, tell him that Felicia has diphtheria, and give him one of Felicia’s rings.

  But what if he sees Felicia disappearing before I have a chance to talk to him? What if he follows us?

  Then I remember something.

  The toilet cabin is extremely — and I mean extremely — smelly. Everyone uses the one cabin, and the toilet is nothing but a hole in the ground. Even with the buckets of sawdust and lime that we throw down the pit, the smell can knock you down on the spot.

  That’s why the guards never go anywhere near the cabin. There’s only one guard at night, and he’ll be patrolling as far away from the toilet area as possible.

  I feel much better now. I even manage to doze off for a bit. I dream I’m Emil, and my detective friends are hiding all around me behind bushes and trees, ready to come to my aid. They can even strap engines to their waists and fly. If necessary, they’ll sweep down from the air and whisk me away to safety.

  I nearly cry out when Felicia touches my shoulder, but I stop myself just in time. My mother is curled up inside her quilt, but she’s wide awake. So is everyone else in our little group. Except, of course, for Shainie, who is fast asleep beside Cecilia.

  Felicia needs both her hands to hold her baby, so I take the flashlight and lead the way. We walk toward the night guard who is patrolling just outside the fence. I point to the cabin.

  “We need the toilet,” I say. I’ve never been so grateful to be good at Russian. In fact, Russian is now my second-best language after German.

  The guard nods in a bored way.

  So far so good.

  All at once, without warning, a man appears in the dark and dashes past us.

  He has the runs, and he’s rushing to the toilet. A lot of us have the runs on and off. It’s one of the reasons the toilet smells so bad.

  The guard snickers. What luck! The running man makes our own expedition look more ordinary. We’re not the only ones who need the toilet in the middle of the night.

  We follow the man to the cabin. I was right about the guard staying as far away as possible from the stench, but he’s still pointing his flashlight in our direction.

  Fortunately, the man with the runs remains inside for a long time, and eventually the guard turns off his flashlight. I’m praying that he’s lost interest in us.

  I turn off my flashlight, too. There’s no time to waste.

  “Take good care, my angel boy,” Felicia whispers in my ear. She slips the gold band and the diamond ring into my hand, and just like that she’s gone. She’s disappeared into the night.

  A few minutes later, the man with the runs comes out of the cabin. I shine my flashlight at his feet so that he can find his way.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he mutters in Ukrainian. I see now that he’s the father of one of the kids from back home.

  Poor guy. He looks terrible.

  He, too, vanishes into the darkness.

  I now have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  My heart starts to pound like a herd of wild buffaloes, and I’m clutching Felicia’s rings so tightly I’m afraid I might draw blood.

  The worst part is that I’m shivering from head to toe. The guard can’t hear my heart, but he’ll see that I’m scared.

  I wish I could just slip back to the yard. But it’s much too risky. If I don’t bribe the guard, and he notices that Felicia’s gone, he’ll sound the alarm and go looking for her. She’ll have the entire army after her, and we’ll all get into terrible trouble.

  I take a deep breath. There’s no choice. I’m going to have to put on an act.

  I think of my mother, and how just before we were exiled, she put on a whole show for the chief of police so he wouldn’t arrest her for trying to hide. I remember how she flirted and laughed as she tried to convince him that she’d merely gone to visit an old friend who needed help. It worked.

  If my mother could do it, so can I. It’s a matter of life and death.

  And everyone is counting on me. They picked me because I’m a kid, and guards are easier on kids. And because they believe in me. I have to live up to their expectations.

  So I take a few more deep breaths and pretend that Max is right there beside me and that we’re on one of our musketeer adventures.

  I walk up to the guard and stop, trying to look as if I haven’t a care in the world.

  “Where’s the woman?” he hisses.

  “She’s still in the cabin,” I say in my best Russian. My voice is miraculously steady. “She has a high fever. I think she might be dying of diphtheria. But she wanted you to have this.” I hand him the gold ring.

  He examines the ring with his flashlight. He has big furry eyebrows and a nose like a twisted pickle.

  Terror is ripping through me, but I enlist every muscle in my body to fight it down.

  “How dare you try to bribe me!” the guard growls, but he doesn’t return the ring, and he’s keeping his voice down.

  “Oh, I forgot. I have this, too.” I hand him the diamond ring. “It’s my mother’s, but you can have it. It’s a real diamond and real rubies.”

  He passes the jewels from one hand to the other, still undecided.

  I begin to panic.

  Barely knowing what I’m doing, I recite the first lines of a poem by a famous Russian poet. It’s called “The Bronze Horseman.” We had to learn it at school.

  I want to show him that I’m a good Russian, and patriotic.

  He stood on the lonely, wave-swept shore,

  And as he gazed at the world afar,

  He let his noble daydreams soar.

  “Pushkin!” the guard exclaims. “How do you know Pushkin?”

  “I love Ru
ssian literature,” I tell him. “I’m reading War and Peace.” Which is at least half true. I have the book, and one of these days I might try to read it.

  “You’re a good boy,” he says. “Very well, go back to your mother. We’ll say no more about it.”

  I quickly climb through the fence. I need to get away before he changes his mind.

  Doing my best not to step on sleeping bodies, I return to our spot. When I reach my quilt, my knees buckle, and I collapse onto the ground.

  My mother whispers, “Darling?”

  I whisper back, “The moon is happy.” It’s a line from a children’s rhyme she used to read to me. She’ll understand.

  I sink back onto my pillow. It’s a pillow we brought from home, and it’s in pretty bad shape by now, but my whole body is aching, and I’m grateful for every feather.

  I tell myself that I can relax now. Once the guards take a bribe, they do what they’ve promised, so no one will tell on them. The guard will find a way to write “deceased” next to the names of Felicia and her baby.

  But Felicia is the opposite of deceased. She and her baby are alive and safe at her cousin’s house.

  Maybe I even saved the baby’s life.

  Eventually I drift off into a deep and very long sleep.

  It isn’t until I wake up that I feel something sharp digging into me from the ground.

  I check my blanket, expecting to find a pebble.

  But it isn’t a pebble.

  It’s Felicia’s emerald earrings! She slipped them into my pocket, and I didn’t even notice.

  I think back to the words of the fortune teller who read my palm in the gym in Czernowitz, just before we left for the endless train ride.

  You will survive . . . many will die, but not you or your parents. You will all be reunited at the end of the war.

  6

  Do You Speak English?

  We’re woken at 5:00 a.m. by the guards’ favorite pastime: shouting into the megaphone.

  “Gather your belongings at once,” an officer bellows. “In one hour you are leaving.”

  “Leaving for where?” Irena sighs as she rubs her eyes. “Why can’t they ever tell us?”

  “They want to make our life interesting,” Cecilia says, and we all laugh nervously.

  “The following individuals are to step forward,” the officer continues, and he lists the names of four men and a woman. One of the men is Andreas.

  The color drains from Andreas’s face, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to faint. Being singled out usually means arrest, and arrest means the Gulag.

  But he manages to stand up and, like a man who has accepted his doom, he strides bravely toward the guard.

  Ten minutes later he returns with a grin that looks almost wild, he’s so relieved. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile, in fact. Not that he’s ever unfriendly, but on the train and then in the yard, he spent most of his time buried in The Magic Mountain.

  “What a stroke of luck! I’m staying here in Novosibirsk,” he announces. “I’ll be working at army headquarters.”

  It turns out that Andreas has a degree in physics and mathematics, and the Russians need those skills for the war effort. Stalin hates university teachers and students, but now it seems they’re useful after all.

  Within one day, our group has shrunk from six adults and three kids to four adults and two kids. Now it’s just me and Mama, Elias and Cecilia and little Shainie, and Irena. Of course, I’m happy for Andreas, and for Felicia and her baby, but I’ll miss them. They were part of our team.

  Andreas pokes around in his bags and pulls out a book.

  “Here’s a present for you, Natt. I expect big things of you. Your father would be very proud if he were here.”

  It gives me a pang when he says that about my father. How can Papa be proud of a boy who turned away from him?

  But Andreas means it as a compliment. I’m surprised by the compliment and by the gift. I didn’t think he’d really noticed me.

  The book is called Do You Speak English? It’s for learning English!

  A strange shiver runs down my spine, as if the book, like Felicia’s emerald earrings, is a magic omen.

  We have relatives in Canada, in the city of Montreal, and we almost joined them before the war broke out. But by the time my mother agreed to go, it was too late. I memorized the letters from Canada and showed them to my friends. A city of enormous stores, beautiful “duplex” apartments, an amusement park called Belmont with a thrilling Cyclone roller coaster.

  And, best of all, no wars.

  Getting organized for the next leg of our journey is no easy task, and once again we thank our stars for Irena. We’d never manage without her. She hardly brought any luggage herself, and we brought way too much. How would we have carried our things without her help? We have seven suitcases and bundles, and Mama’s heavy coat.

  In the end, three hours pass before we leave.

  “Please line up in twos,” a guard with a strange singsong voice finally instructs us. “We’re walking to the river, and from there you will sail north.”

  Did he say sail? I’m sure that’s what I heard.

  We’re going to sail down a river! Sounds like fun.

  7

  Second Letter to Max

  September 12, 1941

  Dear Max,

  Remember when we were Tom and Huckleberry, sailing down the Mississippi River?

  Well, guess what? I actually sailed down a real river on a real raft.

  After a few days in Novosibirsk, we were told we’d be heading north. Only five people were allowed to stay, and one of them was Andreas the Tall. The army needs his expertise. The rest of us walked in pairs to the Ob River. The river looked as if it was close by, but it kept getting farther away (optical illusion). In the end it took us two hours to reach the harbor.

  There were hundreds of other exiles there. We all boarded three enormous barges, which are rafts with low sides. The barges were connected by cables, like ducklings following their mother. The mother duck was a powerful tugboat. Each barge also had a huge steering oar manned first by one sailor, then a second sailor. Every six hours, they switched.

  We loaded our things, and then we had to carry hundreds of boxes of food and tools that the Russians were delivering to different places.

  At that point it began to pour. The whole time we were in Novosibirsk sleeping outdoors, it didn’t rain, but as soon as we set off, a rainstorm came crashing down. All we could do was pull our coats over our heads.

  The tugboat needed wood for its steam engine. Guess who got to supply that wood? Yes, us. Every day rowboats were lowered down to the water, and we climbed into the boats, which we then rowed to the shore.

  There are forests all along the river. The adults cut the wood, and we kids gathered raspberries and pine nuts, which you roast in a fire.

  No one actually knew how to cut trees. Mama and Irena tried to use a two-handed saw, but they kept losing their balance and falling backwards.

  The guards had nets that had been dipped in kerosene, and they put them over their hats to keep the clouds of mosquitoes away — very clever. The mosquitoes literally made the sky dark, but such are the sacrifices we must make for Mother Russia, and we were happy to do it. We looked quite funny by the time we returned to the rowboats, with our faces and hands swollen by bites.

  Eventually the passengers, including Mama, became quite good at lowering and raising and rowing the boats, handling the saws and axes and protecting themselves from the mosquitoes by working fast and wearing many layers of clothes.

  After a week on the barge, we did a detour on the Tom River so we could stop at the city of Tomsk, which is even bigger than Novosibirsk.

  We weren’t allowed to leave the barge, but we bought food from the locals, including, believe it or not, a del
icious warm meal of kasha with fried onions, just like Aunt Dora used to make. She’d be pleased to know her recipe has reached all the way to Siberia.

  Then we continued north, up the Tom and back to the Ob River. But this time the Ob was more like an ocean than a river.

  A very stormy ocean. It also got a lot colder. When it rained, the wind was like a hammer driving icy daggers of rain into my body. The wild waves made people seasick . . . I will spare you the details. We couldn’t even see the shore half the time, but we didn’t drown.

  We soon had more room on the barge, because after Tomsk, around fifty families from each barge were let off every day for resettlement at different towns. We are Special Settlers, and we feel truly privileged to be part of Stalin’s resettlement plan.

  The one sad part for me was that Elias and Cecilia and little Shainie had to leave the barge before us. It happened so fast that we didn’t have a chance to explain that we’re together.

  However, a guard told us where they were going, so I’ll be able to write to them.

  Several wood-chopping and food-gathering stops later, our turn came to leave the barge. We were loaded onto a truck and taken to our new home.

  It’s called Porotnikov. It’s a charming little place surrounded by the beauties of nature, including many forests and a river. I know we will be happy here. You can write to me c/o the Community House, which is where we are now, waiting to find a place to rent.

  We happened to arrive on movie night, and even though there’s no electricity here, and we were quite worn out from puking, we watched a film powered by a generator with a handle that someone had to turn. When the person turned the handle too fast or too slow, the film went crazy and everyone laughed, even though the subject (building wells and forges) was very interesting.

  I can’t wait to hear from you and to find out what you’ve been up to.

  Your fellow musketeer, Natius

  8

  Rock Bottom

  The worst thing has happened. You think the worst thing has already happened, but then it turns out there’s something even worse.