Our rabbi the melamed had another arrangement.
He would start the week with a game. He’d stand in front of us, one hand on his hip, the other scratching his head. Soon I’d see a shower of dandruff falling to his shoulders. He’d frown and ask, who knows which tree we can break on the Sabbath, eh? And I was an expert on trees. I was a professor on trees. There wasn’t a boy in the village who knew the forest like I did. I said to myself, I’ll find him a tree and impress him. I forgot it’s forbidden to break trees on the Sabbath. Nu! He broke my bones and I ran away from the cheder and sat in a ditch by the road. For two weeks I lived in the ditch. I brought planks to the ditch and I made myself a room without a roof. I brought a large stone and a blanket and water to drink, and cookies, and a catapult and I was content. I saw boys and girls walking along the road together, arms around each other’s waists, whispering into each other’s ears, laughing. As if they had no Hitler on the radio.
I frequently counted wagons of hay returning from the field. Wagons with humps of hay. Sitting on top were the farmers. They were usually tired and sleepy. Sometimes I’d flick a stone at them with my catapult. They’d jump in fright, raising their whip and looking behind. Then they’d fall asleep. I saw women on the road, dragging heavy baskets of apples. At noon, they’d return with baskets, cursing the bad day and bad luck brought by black cats.
One day my rabbi the melamed came to my room in the ditch. The rabbi held a hat in his hand. He stood above me, calling me. I didn’t answer.
What are you doing here?
Looking.
Aren’t you bored?
Interested, actually.
Children in cheder are asking about you.
What do they care?
They don’t understand where you disappeared to.
I like living next to the road.
I want you to return to cheder.
Not coming back.
Your parents want you to return.
I caught sand falling from the wall of the ditch.
Come back to cheder and you can have this hat as a gift, want it?
I went back, did I have a choice?
I put on a woolen hat with a small peak, a new hat.
Are you coming?
Coming.
I go into the room. See three children turn to the wall making a sound like chah. Chah. Quietly. As if they had a pile of mucus to throw up. The rabbi puts his handkerchief into his pocket and sticks his thumb under the belt of his trousers. He towers over me, tells me, read a verse from the book, and my throat constricts.
The children all look at me. At least two make faces at me from behind the book. I look down. The book is open in front of me, a salad of letters on the page. Silence in the room. I keep half an eye on the rabbi. His cheeks flush pinkish blue up to his neck, most of all at the ends of his ears. His hand rises and I go cold. Smack. He hits me with his belt. Smack. Smack. Smack. Tired, he left the room to smoke a cigarette. The children in the room jump on their chairs, call, na. Na. Na. Na. Na. Na. Some make vomiting noises, only one sits quietly, sticks his finger in his nose and then in his mouth, one slaps two next to him on the head, as if they were drums, they grab him by the trousers and pull hard, he shouts, stop, stop, bending forward, the two pay him back with a fast drumming on his back, he grabs their legs and bang. A heap of children rolling on the floor, the boy with his finger in his nose at the bottom.
I sat in the corner swallowing tears of shame and prayed to God that my rabbi the melamed would go blind. That my rabbi the melamed would limp and have a permanent stutter. No, no, may his tongue fall into the snow and stick there for eternity, I wish, I wish, that he’d come into the room, open his mouth wide, want to say Leiber, read from the book, and all that would come out would be mmmm. Mmmm. I wish, I wish. I know the rabbi decided I’d rebel against him. That I deliberately didn’t want to read, to make him mad. But I didn’t. I couldn’t remember the Hebrew letters.
I also got it from rabbi the melamed because of the Sabbath.
My brother Yitzhak and I agreed to bathe in the Tur’i Remety River on the Sabbath for a few candies. Older children said, if you go in the river on the Sabbath, we’ll give you all the candies we have in our pockets, want to? They showed us the nice candies in their pockets. We stripped quickly and waded into the river. We got no candies. One of them immediately ran to call our rabbi. The rabbi arrived in his Sabbath clothes and large hat. My brother and I decided to dive. We held hands, took a deep breath, and hop. Down we sank. One, two, three, four, five, we ran out of air. We raised our heads. Ah, the rabbi was waiting for us at the river. He shook his head, and I saw a belt hovering over me.
At home I complained about the rabbi.
I said, the rabbi hits me with his belt. Father, it hurts.
Father said, Leiber, you study hard, d’you hear, and off he went.
I went to mother, mother, help me, it hurts. Mother was silent.
My sister, Sarah, put her book aside and said, Leiber is right, father needs to do something, mother, you tell him.
Mother took a candy from the drawer, gave it to me and said, the rabbi knows what’s good for you. The rabbi decides, Leiber, and you have to listen to him, understand? I was silent. Throwing off my shoes, I jumped outside and ran barefoot to the forest. I heard mother shouting, Leiber, Leiber, come back. I didn’t go back. I only went back when it got dark and I was hungry.
A few days later, the Czechs recruited the rabbi. Soldiers on horses were dragging a cannon. The rabbi sat on one of the horses. I sat in the ditch and he rode past me. His face was a whitish gray color, his body had shrunk, and under my woolen hat I felt happy, I called out, there is a God, there is. Because I didn’t want him to speak to me. I never saw him again.
Then the Hungarians came and life in the village was turned upside down. The Hungarians sacked the Czech teachers. Replacement teachers arrived from Hungary. Anti-Semitic teachers. They immediately separated Jewish and Christian children. Mainly for sports lessons. Christian children were given wooden weapons to train with before being recruited to the army. The children trained in the yard, right-turn, left-turn. They were known as Levente. They turned us Jews into servants. We had to cut firewood. In the meantime, the village was full of rumors.
The shoemaker whispered in the synagogue that they were taking Jews and burning them. Shooting them at enormous pits, spreading lime, firing, then another layer. The grocer said the Germans were putting Jews in cars, closing the door tightly and pouring poison inside. Then they throw them to the dogs. At home, around the table with a glass of tea, mother said God would help and Hitler would burn like a candle. Father said, Hitler will burn up like a feeble tree. The bald neighbor came in and said first they should pull out his teeth, one by one, with rusty pliers. Then the childless neighbor came in and said, the British will come soon, they’ll hang Hitler on a rope, damn him. They always killed Hitler at the table. Rabbis even came from the city, two I didn’t know, one plump, one short and not so fat, they said, Jews, there is nothing to worry about. The plump one said, we have a powerful God. He will take care of us. The short one wiped away the white crumbs at the corners of his mouth and said, very true, trust in God alone. But I was very worried and stuck to Shorkodi.
A handsome young man, he was from the Jewish Forced Labor Battalion. The Hungarians brought them from Budapest to cut wood for the Germans. Shorkodi ate supper with