The Mascot (8 page)

“With that, he lifted me up onto his shoulders and off we marched back into the sunlight. We joined the other soldiers, who were now swaggering about aimlessly. I was frightened by their drunkenness, and even though I was now safely on the good soldier's shoulders I sensed that some of the soldiers were uneasy about my presence.

“The horrible soldier scowled in my direction. Suddenly, he began howling like a wolf, obviously to frighten me, which he did. A few of the others joined in. It must have been the alcohol that turned them into beasts.

“I was still perched on the good soldier's shoulders, and I could sense that he was nervous. He took a stronger grip of my legs. He used his free hand to reach for his pistol and suddenly fired a shot in the air. Everybody went quiet. We were all motionless for what seemed like an eternity.

“Then the good soldier looked around the circle of men, still brandishing his pistol. Nobody made a move against him, so he eventually lowered it.

“The matter of my presence had been settled for the time being, but I had no idea how long I would remain protected by the good soldier. I must have come that close to death and knew I would have to be cautious in the future. But for the moment I felt as if the good soldier had become my guardian.”

“Why do you think he did this?” I asked.

“Who knows. Perhaps I reminded him of another boy he knew. Perhaps he pitied me. After all, what decent person would let harm come to a child? He saw that I was a human being, even though I looked feral after all that time in the forest.

“Mind you, the soldiers weren't much different. They looked like they hadn't washed in ages. Some of them had green teeth, like moss was growing on them. But that was more than I had. Most of mine had dropped out by then.”

My father returned to the scene in the schoolyard. “After that the soldiers gathered up their weapons and packs, and we set off in silence. As we did so, I glanced back at the prisoners lying dead. What was strange were the butterflies that had suddenly descended out of the sky in a swarm. I was hypnotized by how beautiful it all was.”

“Beautiful?” I must have sounded slightly appalled, because my father quickly added, “Of course, I was sorry for them, especially the old man who'd tried to protect me, but they were dead. What could I do? I had to think about myself. For the first time I felt safe. No, that is not the right word. I also knew I had to be very, very careful, as the good soldier had warned me. I felt I had a chance to survive if it wasn't found out that I was circumcised. In those days it indicated you were Jewish.” My father blushed.

“So you believe you are Jewish?” I asked.

My father nodded.

I wondered what that made my brothers and me. To what extent and in what way were we Jewish.

“Do you have any other memories of being Jewish?”

“I have one memory of a man, you know, like a priest with a long beard, coming to our house…”

“A rabbi?”

“Yes, that's it, a rabbi. He came for a ceremony that had something to do with my little brother. Perhaps a circumcision.”

“Do you ever consider yourself to be Jewish?” I asked.

My father shrugged and looked slightly bewildered. “In truth I've never known what to call myself,” he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “I was born Jewish. What happened to me happened because I was Jewish. But then the Latvians had me baptized a Lutheran. I am Russian, but all my life everybody has believed I'm a Latvian. God forbid!”

“So what happened after you went with the soldiers?” I asked, steering my father back to his memories. I did not want to surrender the intimacy of the darkened room.

“I was soon back in the forest,” my father said. “I was still scared, but not in the way I was before. Of course, I was now worried that what was ‘no good' about me would be discovered. All my old fears in the forest about wolves and things had been swept aside for a new and much darker one.

“That first night the soldiers made a camp with a fire. They sat around it, drinking. All the soldiers seemed hypnotized by the flames and the crackling of the fire. I sat quietly next to the good soldier, in fact I was almost cuddling him: I was hungry for human warmth. At one point I noticed the horrible soldier staring at me from the other side of the fire. He was smiling at me, but his eyes were hard. I looked away, pretending that our eyes hadn't met.

“But in truth I was quivering inside. I was desperate to stay alive and suddenly feared that now that the soldiers, even the good one, had had time to think about their decision to take me with them, the more uncomfortable they might begin to feel about it.

“My body must have been shaking as well because I then felt the good soldier's arm tighten around my shoulder. He hadn't noticed the stare of the horrible soldier and didn't understand what I feared. ‘Cold,' he said, taking off his scarf and wrapping it around me.

“Sometime later, as I was nodding off, I heard the bad soldier call out. ‘Hey boy,' he said. I roused myself and looked across at him. He was now sitting upright and looked alert. He called out to me again and this time beckoned me over.

“I had no idea what he would do to me, but I didn't want to make him angry in any way. I went over to him. I half-expected a slap from him since just the sight of me seemed to aggravate him. Instead, he pointed at his chest. ‘Vezis,' he said and then repeated it. At first I didn't understand. Then it dawned on me; he was telling me his name. The bad soldier was called Vezis.

“Then the good soldier beckoned me back over to him. He pointed to himself and said, ‘Kulis.' I immediately tried to pronounce it. ‘Kulis. Kulis. Kulis,' I said, savoring it a bit. ‘That's right!' he said, pleased. I felt as if I had done something wonderful. Then the others joined in. I went around the circle learning all their names. There was, let me see, Rozes, Upe, Ozols, and Dzintars.

“There were about three or four more soldiers whose names I can't recall. Kulis called for bread and alcohol, which they made me drink. It nearly knocked me out.
‘Samagonka,'
they called it: if you had just the right amount it was like an anesthetic.”

“Did you tell them your name?”

“They kept pointing at me, showing me that they wanted to know who I was, but there was nothing that I could tell them. I couldn't remember my name.

“The soldiers talked among themselves for quite a while and then finally they seemed to agree on something. Sergeant Kulis stood me up before him and pointed to my chest, saying ‘Uldis Kurzemnieks.' He ordered me to repeat it, but I found it hard to pronounce. Every time I mispronounced it they'd boisterously push at each other and slap each other on the back, laughing. That set me off. I did a little jig around the fire while chanting the words to a tune I made up as I went along. That's how I became Uldis Kurzemnieks.

“Exhausted, I flopped down and dropped off to sleep next to Sergeant Kulis. I woke up before dawn. The others were still asleep except for the sergeant. ‘Hurry, get up,' he said to me. He had a small bucket in one hand and led me by the other into the surrounding woods. We came to a stream and he showed me how to collect water, which we took back to the camp. He showed me how to stoke the fire and prepare tea. By that time the others had stirred. I went around pouring tea into their mugs. One or two of them even tousled my hair and smiled at me. I realized I had a job and I could make myself useful.

“Later that morning, I learned how to collect kindling wood for the fire in the evening. The sergeant gave me a forage bag that I wore over my shoulder so that whenever I came across some wood I could collect it. I was a quick learner. I started to make myself more and more useful to the soldiers in those early days with them. After the sergeant had taught me about the water and the fire I could do it all alone. I would be up and about before all of them, preparing their tea. And I'd learned so much from my time alone in the forest that I would pick berries for them that they could eat safely. They were impressed with me. I became more certain that I had found my place in the group.

“I also picked up Latvian quickly. Whenever a soldier handled an object or saw me doing something, he would call across to me, naming it in Latvian, and I would repeat it until I remembered it perfectly.

“During daylight we moved through the forest. The soldiers were always on the hunt for
partizani,
they called them. I heard that word constantly, but for some time I had no idea what
partizani
was. We never seemed to see any.

“Then, no more than a few days after I'd been taken, Sergeant Kulis told me the troop was returning to base camp. ‘S,' they all called it. Even though the babushka had tried to clean me up, I was still dirty and smelly when they captured me, but they hadn't paid much attention to that. Now, suddenly, Sergeant Kulis was obsessed with cleaning me up. He scrubbed my face and hands and combed my matted hair.

“Then he and the others tried to teach me how to march like a soldier, but of course I couldn't master that. I still had my clown boots on. They taught me how to salute and click my heels together, at the same time shouting my name, ‘Uldis Kurzemnieks.' It felt silly but I knew that they were deadly serious about all this. In the end they were satisfied with my performance. One of the soldiers hoisted me onto his shoulders—they all took turns carrying me now and would even bicker with each other about whose turn it was—and off we went.

“We passed through a village en route to the base camp. There were a few people going about their business, but when we marched by they became very quiet. One man took a furtive look at us, and I could see that he was shocked by the sight of me, this little boy, marching along with the soldiers.

“Finally we reached base camp in a school on the outskirts of a village.”

“Its name?” I asked.

“I remember ‘S,' that's all,” my father answered.

“You've forgotten it?”

“No. The soldiers only ever referred to it as ‘S,' as if they were talking in code.”

“Why would that have been?”

My father shrugged. “The base was where I met the commander of the unit for the first time. Sergeant Kulis took me to his office set up in a schoolroom in the main building. We stood outside the door for a moment. He leaned down, tidied my hair, and made me practice my salute and greeting one more time. Then he told me to wait there on the doorstep until I was summoned.

“As I stood there a few soldiers spotted me and called out, ‘Hey! Kurzemnieks!' I had never seen them before, but obviously they'd already heard about the new member of their troop.

“Just then the door opened and Sergeant Kulis ordered me inside. Once I'd entered, I immediately clicked my boots together, saluted, and stated my name proudly. I stood at attention, waiting to hear a return greeting and to be dismissed. Instead I heard a roar of laughter. I dropped my pose and stared across the room. A man was seated behind a desk. As he stood up, I could see that he was a short man and a bit plump. He was wearing a uniform—it looked brand-new: sharply creased with shiny buttons and a high collar. But it was its color that hypnotized me. It was a gorgeous light blue like the color of the sky.

“The commander came around to my side of the desk. I saw that he wore black boots up to his knees. They shone like a mirror so that I could see myself reflected in them. He saluted me. Then he leaned against the edge of the desk and lit himself a cigarette. He smoked the cigarette slowly and sized me up through half-closed eyes. He was formidable. I could tell that he was important. ‘Just be still and don't stare back,' I told myself. It was an instinctive reaction, but I felt that I didn't like him.

“After several moments he beckoned me closer. I flinched slightly.

“Sergeant Kulis must have sensed my hesitation. ‘Hurry up!' he whispered in my ear, giving me a quick shove from behind. Now that I was closer, the commander made a grab for me and hoisted me up in midair so that I hovered above him. I stared straight ahead, still not meeting his gaze.

“‘Little man,' he said directly to me so that I had to look down and meet his gaze. His eyes were like steel, even though he was smiling up at me. ‘Do you know who I am?' he asked. I was surprised because he spoke my language perfectly. I shook my head. ‘I am your commanding officer,' he said. ‘Commander Lobe. Can you say that?' I remained hovering in midair as he made me repeat his name several times until I had mastered it perfectly.”

“Commander Lobe? Remember when I went to Stockholm to meet him?” I asked.

“That's right,” my father said.

I had gone in search of Commander Lobe in the early 1980s and found he was living in Stockholm. My intent was to thank him in person for his kindness toward my father during the war. However, my encounter with the commander and his wife had gone awry, and I left bewildered and disturbed by Lobe's terrifying behavior. I had never told my father exactly what transpired during that visit, but in light of his revelations to me now I began to understand why Lobe had reacted the way he did.

“Then finally he put me down on his couch in the corner of the room and sat down next to me. He produced a pencil from somewhere and twirled it around between two fingers before making it disappear. I was mesmerized by his magic trick. I lost all my reserve with him and tugged at his jacket, trying to find the missing pencil. ‘Show me. Show me Commander Lobe,' I pleaded with him, hoping that if I pronounced his name perfectly again, he would let me in on his secret. And he did. Slowly the pencil edged its way out of the sleeve of his jacket as if it were alive. And I laughed at how I'd been fooled.