A Blessing on the Moon (9 page)

“Is it true?” Reb Elimelech asks, marching beside me.

“Is what true?” I say.

He lowers his voice. “What we heard about the moon?”

I’m exasperated.

“Do I have the moon?” I say. “Do you have the moon? No, but still, we’re all thieves! We’re all to blame!”

“Well,” Reb Elimelech hugs himself tighter, trying not to shiver. “Surely, it’s behind us now.”

“What exactly is behind us now?” I ask.

“Everything,” he says. “For where else could the Rebbe be leading us, if not to the World to Come?”

The World to Come, the World to Come.

I grunt, hoping he is right, and look past him at the sunset, spreading like a purple bruise behind the hills.

• • •

WE SLEEP THAT
night, as best we can, near a quiet wheat field. Exhausted, shivering, the Jews have no choice but to lie upon the hard and frozen ground. This, of course, inspires many new and several old complaints. The Zionists and the Bundists have banded together and are demanding blankets for everyone. From where we are to procure these, no one knows. Members of the Mizrachi group are refusing to sleep anywhere near members of the Agudas. Even dead, their bitter disagreements continue unresolved. The Communists have made their own camp, “scientifically selected,” near a ragged fence. Anyone who wants is invited to join them there. As a result, most of the older Jews have scurried like frightened mice across the field, so as to be nowhere near them. A group of women are grumbling already of how they miss their grave, so secure and warm were they beneath the earth.

“Of course, it was dark, with all sorts of horrors, but at least we were together, without this constant bickering.”

“We had bickering in the pit,” her companion dares to contradict her.

“We had no bickering.”

“We had plenty of bickering!”

“Such nonsense!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“All right, so we had bickering, but at least it wasn’t petty.”

“It was petty.”

“All right, it was petty, but at least we knew where we would sleep each night.”

Small cells of resisters have sprung up, defiant men clustering in
tense groups around distant trees. Their arms are crossed and their eyes are shifty and private. Fretting, they mutter and make speeches to each other.

I pass near enough to hear their words, clumsy with emotion.

“Consider the facts,” says one, a young firebrand, still muscular despite his time beneath the ground.

“And what are the facts?”

His eyes shine as he answers the men gathering before him.

“For one thing,” he says, “we’re moving around.

” “True,” the others have to concede.

“We’re speaking to each other.”

“It’s a good point,” the group turns in upon itself, mumbling, muttering.

“We’re all still bleeding.”

“It never stops, that’s true!” they cry.

“So perhaps …”

“Perhaps what?” Moyshe Leib the tailor steps forward. “Perhaps we haven’t died?” he asks incredulously.

“I feel we should at least consider the possibility. Or cease to call ourselves men!” The young hothead makes one last attempt to arouse the passions of the others.

“Reb Dovid, you were in a pit underneath the ground for how long?” his antagonist counters, not unkindly.

“True,” Reb Dovid lowers his eyes, searching the ground point-lessly.

“With no air.”

“No, it’s true,” he is defeated, his arguments frustrated.

“Without food or water.”

“I know, I know. You think I didn’t notice!”

“Perhaps we haven’t died, you say? Perhaps we were never alive in the first place!”

“But why are we not in the World to Come?”

The World to Come, the World to Come.

They chant these words like starving workers demanding bread from a government storehouse. And like a snake, the anguished phrase slithers away from them and into the larger group, biting an ankle here, an ankle there, until everyone is infected by the poison of its doubt.

A cache of dirty blankets appears from nowhere in an old abandoned shed. The Rebbe’s doing, I feel certain. The people fight over the wretched strips of cloth and cover themselves as best they can. They’ve put sleep off as long as possible but are now unable to resist its pull. Groaning, they sink into the snow. Mothers hug their children, husbands press against their wives, brothers huddle near brothers, hoping to warm themselves in the bitter whistling wind. I’m reminded of a typing pool, so many teeth are chattering.

I pull my coat tighter about myself. I cannot sleep among them, so powerful is their stench. A moldy humic tang. They all stink of it and no amount of washing in the snow seems able to relieve them of its fetid odors. Apparently, they don’t smell it on each other, and although
I’ve passed the better part of the day in their company, I’ve yet to grow accustomed to it, and am undone, often to the point of a swimming nausea, if I linger too long or too near.

They lie lifelessly in the snow, three thousand bundles dropped by a careless traveler. They sleep, their bickering unresolved. They are frightened, of course. And who can blame them? This afternoon, we walked through a small town, spilling our blood in its narrow streets. Only the children saw us. Most ran away in fright, but many threw rocks and jeered. No one has any idea when our sufferings will end.

I sit upon a poorly cut tree stump. The peasants will use anything, anything at all, to slice down their wood, without concern for next season’s forest or its harvest. Enough starlight is reflected in the white fields for me to see the outlines of a figure as it stands at the far end of our pasture. On its knees at first, it pushes itself up by its hands and spins in slow circles, searching for something or someone. Cautiously, it traces a winding route though the maze of ragged bundles, careful not to step upon a leg or an arm or a hand. Its sex is masked by the triangular shape of the blanket that hangs, like a prayer shawl, from its shoulders. It walks slowly, but gradually I realize, in my direction. Its musty smells reach me long before the figure itself, which soon shuffles its feet before me, waiting for my acknowledgment.

I peer through the murk at the outline of its narrow head, at the bottom of which seems to float a luminous white funnel.

“Reb Chaim,” the figure clears its throat.

“Reb Elimelech?” I say, squinting uselessly through the gloom.

“I was hoping to have a word.”

“Of course, my friend, of course.” I make a space for him beside me on the ice-hardened stump. “Sit, please, do.”

He sits and seems to nod amiably, although it’s too dark really to see more than the white triangular beard against the dark fabric of his blanket, the occasional reflection of snow glimmering in the pupils of his eyes.

He pulls the blanket closer to his chest, clasping its hems together in his fist. I wait, but he says nothing and clears his throat again.

“Please,” I say. “Feel free to speak your mind.”

I know him only too well. He will require at least a second invitation and possibly a third before permitting himself to speak.

He kicks with his foot at the snow.

“Reb Chaim,” he says, “forgive me. I’ve been tossing and turning all night, unable to sleep. Certain unpleasant thoughts won’t leave me. However, I have no wish to disturb you with them.”

“I assure you, you’re not.”

“Then permit me to ask: how long have we known one another?”

“Forever,” I say. “Since we were boys.”

We’d sit in cheder, our heads pressed together, learning Mishnah.

Two men hold a garment. One says, This is mine, and the other says, This is mine
.

“Have I not been a friend to you then all these years? Were your affairs not as dear to me as my own? Did your children not call me uncle and think of me, on occasion, as a second father?”

“Of course,” I say, shifting my buttock. The stump is growing cold. “You were as dear to me as a brother.”

“Did I not seek your counsel and offer you mine in return? When we were sick, did we not cheer each other? Did we not shore each other up in times of sadness or distress?”

“Of course, of course,” I say. “You have done all that one man could for another. You have nothing to rebuke yourself for on my account, if that is what you’re wondering.”

“Then why did you leave me in the pit?”

I am startled by his question. “Pardon me?” I say.

“I must know.”

“Is this an accusation?”

“You just ran, didn’t you?”

“I ran. Of course, I ran! What else was I to do?”

“Without thinking to stop or help anybody else!”

“Keep your voice down,” I implore him, stealing a look into the sleeping field.

“But how could you just leave us there?”

“You were dead,” I whisper.

“But so were you!” he shouts.

“What did you expect me to do?”

The blanket falls from his shoulders. The black outlines of his arms shake furiously.

“Didn’t you hear me calling? Why didn’t you look? Didn’t you even look!”

I stammer, seeing before me, in the tangled pile of bodies, an open screaming mouth.

“Yes,” I say. “Once. Quickly.”

“But you didn’t stop, did you!” He fumbles for his blanket, bending at the waist.

“I’d been shot in the head,” I scream. “I wasn’t thinking clearly!”

I TRY TO
sleep, standing, inside a hollow tree. The ruined trunk provides enough of a barrier to keep the wind from whistling through my head wound.
Why did I not help anyone on the day we were shot?
The thought never even occurred to me! And now it won’t go away. It curses my sleep. All night long, whenever I’m able to nod off, it returns.
How could I just leave them?
I stick my head out of the large knothole and search for a glimpse of the Rebbe’s nest. The tree line stands in silhouette against the deep lavender sky. He could be sleeping anywhere in the trees or among the bodies lying in the snow. If only he were here, inside my vest, nestled against my heart, then maybe I could sleep.

I reach into my traveling bag and fumble among its contents for the
little spyglass. I raise the tube to my eye and, through its fractured lens, search the field for his small, distinctive head.

My heart freezes.

Moving through the sleepers, they jostle the bundles, poking and prodding them with wet and snarling snouts.

Wolves!

I experience a desire to run and feel doubly ashamed for it.

I am frantically searching through my mind for the correct course of action, when one of the wolves raises up on its hind legs.

“Chaim Skibelski!” it seems to cry in a long and mournful whine.

The others wolves stop shifting. They lift their ears and listen. I watch them through my telescope, making as little noise as possible. A nervous wind blows across the field, stirring the barren trees.

Is it possible a wolf has howled my name?

I tremble inside my tree trunk, my scrotum tightening inside my pants.

“Chaim Skibelski!” the wolf repeats his doleful wail, nose raised and sniffing. I can’t tell if he is larger than the others or just nearer to me, the night is so thick. His green eyes glint in flashes as they sweep across the field.
Hunger,
this curious word pounds inside my brain.

“What do you want?” I say, bending so my face is level with the knothole. “There’s no point in waking everyone!”

The wolf stands still, his ears twitching, one paw raised.

“Is that really you, Reb Chaim?” he calls out, his breath steaming in the air.

“I am here,” I say, poking my head from the tree. Instantly, the wind whips through my head wound with a searing electrical pain, an icy current singes the inside of my skull. Worse than the worst of toothaches. “What do you want?” I cry, unintentionally betraying my pain.

The wolf leaps towards my tree and stands, leaning, with his forepaws against the bark of the trunk. The rest of the pack skulks gingerly behind him in a gang. I can hear the tinkle of snow falling in small patches from the undercoat of his belly. His breath is very near. I shrink inside my tree, hiding from his gaze. But he sticks his twitching rictus into the knothole. Shifting his long head back and forth, he searches out my scent. His tongue clacks and the forest is on him like a stale cologne, a musty tincture of squirrel carcass, pine needles, and juniper berry oil.

He slavers, “Ah, Chaimka,” in a voice both cold and sly.

“Who are you?” I ask. My words quaver, despite my efforts to steady them. I press my back as tightly as I can against the inner bark, moving away from his twitching maw.

“You’re on our territory,” he whines, forcing his snout in deeper through the hole until it blocks my remaining light. His wet tongue licks his teeth. It sounds like the latches of a suitcase being unlatched. His saliva splatters my wrist where it’s bared at the cuff and his whiskers bristle smartly against my skin.

I can hear the other wolves snickering, although faintly, muffled by the wooden chamber of my tree.

“But you’ll belong here,” he says, “when we eat and excrete you into our soil.”

The sniggering comes from all directions.

“Who are you?” I repeat. “I demand that you identify yourself.”

“You know me,” he whines.

I open my eyes wide to peer through the pitch at his lean and hairy face. Is it possible I know him from somewhere before? I’m about to clear my throat to speak, when his snout lunges forward, growling. He nips at my hand. I batten his face with my cane, raising it as high as I can in my constricted space. He yelps, pulling back.

“How dare you threaten us!” I shout, climbing with difficulty from my trunk.

The pack thunders around my tree before disappearing into the darkened woods. Their untamed stench hangs, like a fume, in the air.

I run after them, not knowing what I’m doing or why. I run through the high drifts and into a narrow ravine. Panting, I’m forced to stop. It’s impossible to keep up with them.

“Wolves?” I cry out. “Are you there?”