Milkweed

  MILKWEED

  A NOVEL

  JERRY SPINELLI

  Alfred A. Knopf

  New York

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Remembered:

  Bill Bryzgornia

  and

  Masha Bruskina

  Smuggling was carried out through holes and cracks in the walls . . . and through all the hidden places unfamiliar to the conquerors’ foreign eyes.

  —February 26, 1941

  Scroll of Agony:

  The Warsaw Diary of

  Chaim A. Kaplan

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to those who helped in the writing of this book: Eileen Nechas, Patty Beaumont, Susan Cherner,

  Charmaine Leibold, Laurie Baty, Ariel Gold,

  Hildegard Veigel, Kathye Petrie, Eva Mercik,

  Dr. Severin Hockberg, Rabbi Cynthia Kravitz,

  Rahel Lerner, Chava Boylan, Jack Waintraub,

  Marek Web, Peter Black, my editor, Joan Slattery,

  and my wife, Eileen.

  1

  MEMORY

  I am running.

  That’s the first thing I remember. Running. I carry something, my arm curled around it, hugging it to my chest. Bread, of course. Someone is chasing me. “Stop! Thief!” I run. People. Shoulders. Shoes. “Stop! Thief!”

  Sometimes it is a dream. Sometimes it is a memory in the middle of the day as I stir iced tea or wait for soup to heat. I never see who is chasing and calling me. I never stop long enough to eat the bread. When I awaken from dream or memory, my legs are tingling.

  2

  SUMMER

  He was dragging me, running. He was much bigger. My feet skimmed over the ground. Sirens were screaming. His hair was red. We flew through streets and alleyways. There were thumping noises, like distant thunder. The people we bounced off didn’t seem to notice us. The sirens were screaming like babies. At last we plunged into a dark hole.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “Soon it won’t be ladies chasing you. It will be Jackboots.”

  “Jackboots?” I said.

  “You’ll see.”

  I wondered who the Jackboots were. Were unfooted boots running along the streets?

  “Okay,” he said, “hand it over.”

  “Hand what over?” I said.

  He reached into my shirt and pulled out the loaf of bread. He broke it in half. He shoved one half at me and began to eat the other.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you,” he said. “That lady you took this from, I was just getting ready to snatch it for myself.”

  “I’m lucky,” I said.

  He burped. “You’re quick. You took it before I even knew what happened. That lady was rich. Did you see the way she was dressed? She’ll just buy ten more.”

  I ate my bread.

  More thumping sounds in the distance. “What is that?” I asked him.

  “Jackboot artillery,” he said.

  “What’s artillery?”

  “Big guns. Boom boom. They’re shelling the city.” He stared at me. “Who are you?”

  I didn’t understand the question.

  “I’m Uri,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  I gave him my name. “Stopthief.”

  3

  He took me to meet the others. We were in a stable. The horses were there. Usually they would be out on the streets, but they were home now because the Jackboots were boom-booming the city and it was too dangerous for horses. We sat in a stall near the legs of a sad-faced gray. The horse pooped. Two of the kids got up and went to the next stall, another horse. A moment later came the sound of water splashing on straw. The two came back. One of them said, “I’ll take the poop.”

  “Where did you find him?” said a boy smoking a cigarette.

  “Down by the river,” said Uri. “He snatched a loaf from a rich lady coming out of the Bread Box.”

  Another boy said, “Why didn’t you snatch it from him?” This one was smoking a cigar as long as his face.

  Uri looked at me. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s a runt,” someone said. “Look at him.”

  “Stand up,” said someone else.

  I looked at Uri. Uri flicked his finger. I stood.

  “Go there,” someone said. I felt a foot on my back, pushing me toward the horse.

  “See,” said the cigar smoker, “he doesn’t even come halfway up to the horse’s dumper.”

  A voice behind me squawked, “The horse could dump a new hat on him!”

  Everyone, even Uri, howled with laughter. Explosions went off beyond the walls.

  The boys who were not smoking were eating. In the corner of the stable was a pile as tall as me. There was bread in all shapes and sausages of all lengths and colors and fruits and candies. But only half of it was food. All sorts of other things glittered in the pile. I saw watches and combs and ladies’ lipsticks and eyeglasses. I saw the thin flat face of a fox peering out.

  “What’s his name?” said someone.

  Uri nodded at me. “Tell them your name.”

  “Stopthief,” I said.

  Someone crowed, “It speaks!”

  Smoke burst from mouths as the boys laughed.

  One boy did not laugh. He carried a cigarette behind each ear. “I think he’s cuckoo.”

  Another boy got up and came over to me. He leaned down. He sniffed. He pinched his nose. “He smells.” He blew smoke into my face.

  “Look,” someone called, “even the smoke can’t stand him. It’s turning green!”

  They laughed.

  The smoke blower backed off. “So, Stopthief, are you a smelly cuckoo?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “He’s stupid,” said the unlaughing boy. “He’ll get us in trouble.”

  “He’s quick,” said Uri. “And he’s little.”

  “He’s a runt.”

  “Runt is good,” said Uri.

  “Are you a Jew?” said the boy in my face.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He kicked my foot. “How can you not know? You’re a Jew or you’re not a Jew.”

  I shrugged.

  “I told you, he’s stupid,” said the unlaugher.

  “He’s young,” said Uri. “He’s just a little kid.”

  “How old are you?” said the smoke blower.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The smoke blower threw
up his hands. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “He’s stupid.”

  “He’s a stupid Jew.”

  “A smelly stupid Jew.”

  “A tiny smelly stupid Jew!”

  More laughter. Each time they laughed, they threw food at each other and at the horse.

  The smoke blower pressed my nose with the tip of his finger. “Can you do this?” He leaned back until he was facing the ceiling. He puffed on the cigarette until his cheeks, even his eyes, were bulging. His face looked like a balloon. It was grinning. I was sure he was going to destroy me with his faceful of smoke, but he didn’t. He turned to the horse, lifted its tail, and blew a stream of silvery smoke at the horse’s behind. The horse nickered.

  Everyone howled. Even the unlaugher. Even me.

  The pounding in the distance was like my heartbeat after running.

  “He must be a Jew,” someone said.

  “What’s a Jew?” I said.

  “Answer the runt,” someone said. “Tell him what a Jew is.”

  The unlaugher kicked ground straw at a boy who hadn’t spoken. The boy had only one arm. “That’s a Jew.” He pointed to himself. “This is a Jew.” He pointed to the others. “That’s a Jew. That’s a Jew. That’s a Jew.” He pointed to the horse. “That’s a Jew.” He fell to his knees and scrabbled in the straw near the horse flop. He found something. He held it out to me. It was a small brown insect. “This is a Jew. Look. Look!” He startled me. “A Jew is an animal. A Jew is a bug. A Jew is less than a bug.” He threw the insect into the flop. “A Jew is that.”

  Others cheered and clapped.

  “Yeah! Yeah!”

  “I’m a horse turd!”

  “I’m a goose turd!”

  A boy pointed at me. “He’s a Jew all right. Look at him. He’s a Jew if I ever saw one.”

  “Yeah, he’s in for it all right.”

  I looked at the boy who spoke. He was munching on a sausage. “What am I in for?” I said.

  He snorted. “Strawberry babka.”

  “We’re all in for it,” said someone else. “We’re in for it good.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said the unlaugher. He came and stood before me. He reached down and fingered the yellow stone hung around my neck on a string. “What’s this?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I always had it.”

  He let go of the stone. He backed off to arm’s length. He wet his finger with spit and rubbed my cheek. “He’s a Gypsy.”

  There were gasps of wonder. The others leaned forward, munching, puffing their tobaccos.

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at his eyes. How black. And his skin. And this.” He flicked the yellow stone.

  The smoke blower said, “You’re a Gypsy, ain’t you?”

  It sounded familiar. I had heard that word before, around me, in a room, near a wagon.

  I nodded.

  “Get him out of here,” said the sausage muncher. “We don’t need Gypsies. They’re dirt.”

  The smoke blower laughed. “Look who’s talking.”

  The one-armed boy spoke for the first time. “Next to Jews, they hate Gypsies the most.”

  “There’s a difference,” said another. “Everybody doesn’t hate the Gypsies, but there’s nobody that doesn’t hate us. Nobody is hated close to us. They even hate us in Washington America.”

  “Because we boil babies and eat them for matzoh!” someone growled scarily.

  Everyone laughed and threw food.

  “We drink people’s blood!”

  “We suck their brains out through their noses with a straw!”

  “Even cannibals hate us!”

  “Even monkeys hate us!”

  “Even cockroaches hate us!”

  Words and laughter and bread and sausages flew through the tobacco smoke and the horse’s legs. Hands reached for the pile. Golden bracelets flew and jars of jam and tiny painted animals and fountain pens. The flanks of the horse flickered as they were pelted. A white-and-purple glass fish bounced off my forehead. The fox fur flew. One boy paraded wearing it about his shoulders, kissing its snout.

  And then the stableman was coming and shouting and we were running, and outside we scattered like cockroaches and I ran with Uri and the thumping explosions were louder and the clouds in the sky were brown and black.

  We ran through streets and alleyways to the back of a small brick building. Uri threw open a wooden hatch, and we plunged into a dark, cool cellar. Uri pulled down the hatch, snipping off the daylight, then he flipped a switch and a bare lightbulb burned among the cobwebs in the ceiling.

  Uri pointed upward. “It’s a barbershop. The barber went. He left everything. I’ll show you tomorrow.”

  The cellar was a home. Carpets covered the floor. There was a bed and a chair and a radio and a chest of drawers. Even an icebox.

  “Tonight you sleep on the floor,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll get you a bed.”

  The explosions stopped, or maybe I just couldn’t hear them anymore. We ate bread and jam and slices of salty meat.

  I said, “What am I in for?”

  He did not look at me. “You heard. Strawberry babka. Eat.”

  4

  When I awoke the next morning, Uri was gone. He returned dragging a mattress. It was small, about half the size of his, but plenty big enough for me.

  I lay down on it. He jerked me to my feet and snapped, “Not yet.” He hauled me outside.

  We walked to the shopping district, where the big stores were. Except some of them were not so big now; the bombardment had left them crumples of brick. Looking down the street, I saw spaces where stores should be. Like broken teeth.

  We went behind the stores, to alleyways of trucks and trash bins and staring cats. Uri said, “Wait here.” He disappeared in a maze of air shafts and fire escapes and doors, and when he came out his arms were loaded with clothes. “For you,” he said.

  I reached.

  “Don’t touch. Follow me.”

  He led me to a bombed-out building, nothing but the back wall standing. We climbed over a jumble of bricks and splintered wood and twisted pipe. “Watch the glass,” he said. I kept stumbling over the heads and arms of manikins. We came to a lopped-off stairway. Uri tested it. “Okay,” he said. We went down into the rubble. Whenever he came to a knob in a pipe, he turned it. Some gave out steam, some nothing. We stopped at one that gave water.

  “Take those rags off,” he said. I took off my clothes. He laid down the new ones and went rooting through the rubble. He returned with a manikin’s leg and a scrub brush. He filled the leg with water. “I’m not thirsty,” I said. He dumped the water over me. He began to scrub me with the brush.

  At first it felt wonderful. Then it didn’t. Leg after leg of water he poured over me. After the scrub brush got down to the soles of my feet, he started again on my face. He grunted as he scrubbed. I squirmed. I cried out. He was scrubbing my skin off.

  At last he stopped. “Baby,” he said. He dried me with a shirt. I screamed in pain from the rubbing. He patted the rest of me dry.

  He glared at me. “Did you ever have a bath?” I stared at him. “Didn’t think so.”

  Then he dressed me in a clean shirt and too-big pants. People gave us looks as we climbed out of the rubble and onto the sidewalk. By the time we were halfway home, I was feeling terrific. I felt new. I felt the air, the sun on my skin. Uri brought his nose to my neck and sniffed. He nodded.

  Back in the cellar we ate sugar cookies and jars of plums in syrup. Then he led me upstairs to the barbershop. I had never been in a barbershop. He was right: the barber had left everything. Rows of colored liquid—green, red, blue—lined the shelf beneath a great mirror.

  “You never had your hair cut, did you?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Have a seat.”

  I climbed into the red padded chair. He spun me around till I got dizz
y. He pumped a lever and I rose higher. He shook out a large cloth and draped it over me. From a glass canister he pulled a comb and scissors and he began combing and snipping. Soon my hair was like fur.

  “All right,” he said, “which one?”

  “Which one?” I echoed.

  He pointed to the bottles. I did not understand why I should be offered a drink after having my hair cut, but I didn’t argue. I had learned never to turn down food.

  I pointed to the blue. “That one.”

  To my surprise he did not give me a drink but instead poured the blue liquid over my head. He shuffled his fingers through my hair and then combed it. It became wet and shiny.

  Outside, people hurried this way and that. Many carried shovels.

  “Are they going to a farm?” I said.

  “They’re digging trenches to stop the tanks,” he said.

  “What’s a tank?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Soldiers marched and ran and blew whistles. People carried large fat bags. They must have been heavy, for one person could carry only one at a time, over his shoulders. If you had a wheelbarrow, you could take three.

  “What’s in the bags?” I said.

  “Sand,” he said.

  I found out where the bags of sand went. I saw them stacked in front of machine guns in doorways and on roofs and at the ends of streets.

  We hopped a streetcar as it rattled down the tracks. We got footholds on the outside and clung to window posts. The wind blew through my new hair. Passengers frowned at us. “Get off,” they said.

  “Look,” said Uri.

  A boy was running along the sidewalk at the same speed as us. It was the boy who blew smoke in my face. His arms were wrapped around a lamp of pure white glass in the shape of a naked woman. The lampshade fell off, but he kept running, weaving in and out of sidewalk people. I looked behind him. A man was chasing him, shouting, “Stop him!”

  Uri swung out from the side of the streetcar like a gate. He waved. “Hey, Kuba!”

  Kuba looked over as he ran. “Hey, Uri!”

  It was then that someone stuck out a foot and tripped him. Kuba went sprawling, and the pure white naked woman shattered on the sidewalk. “Get him!” someone yelled, and the sidewalk people converged on Kuba.