The Mascot Read online

  “What kind of food did you eat?”

  “Plums. Wild plums. Berries. I didn’t know which ones were suitable. I ate them to fill the hole in my belly. Once or twice I ate poisonous ones and got so sick I thought I would die. I just lay on the ground, throwing up, and at those moments I couldn’t have cared less who or what found me—bears, wolves, monsters. Then I would have to force myself to get up and keep walking.

  “Not that the berries or the plums were ever enough. There were days when I couldn’t find anything at all to eat, and I would chew on the sleeve of my jumper. That made me feel safe and helped me get off to sleep.

  “It was not long before the first snow appeared. From then on I had to be careful about leaving trails of footprints. As the snow became heavier, I left the small paths that I had been following, and I went deeper into the forest where nobody would be able to spot my tracks so easily.

  “I had to keep walking to stay as warm as I could, but I soon realized that I was going in circles. I came to the same cottage in a clearing more than once. I would peek at it from behind a tree. But I never approached it.

  “Anyway, it turned out to be a good move to go deeper among the trees, because one day I had a great stroke of luck that saved my life.

  “I was crawling on all fours through some undergrowth. I put my hand forward and it suddenly touched something: I immediately knew it was human. I jumped backward. I was petrified and panting with fear. I expected that whoever it was would grab me and that would be the end of me.

  “I found a stick nearby. I crawled back through the bushes. I could see a man lying there. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive.

  “I reached out and poked him gently with the stick. He didn’t move. I jabbed him again, harder this time and on his chest, but he didn’t stir at all. That restored my courage. I stood above him. I could see he’d been a soldier. He was still in his uniform. There was a stream of blood coming out of his body. It was brown and congealed on top of the snow.

  “I crouched down next to him. His eyes were closed. Then suddenly it crossed my mind that he might be like that lady stuck in the pit. You know, everyone must’ve thought she was dead, but she was alive.

  “I commanded him in a loud voice, ‘Wake up, mister, wake up!’ so that I could be sure that he would hear me. When he didn’t answer I was a hundred percent certain that he was dead.

  “I sat down next to him. Despite the fact he was dead, I started talking to him. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time, and, well, he was better than nobody. I wanted to tell him what had happened to me. I told him those words I remembered, the ones that I told you: Koidanov and Panok. Even then they were already fixed in my mind. Perhaps my mother had drummed them into me, told me not to forget them—”

  “Why would your mother say that to you?” I cut in. “If she thought that you were going to die, then why would she tell you to remember something?”

  My father paused, looking puzzled. “I don’t know,” he said and then went quiet as if something were dawning on him for the first time.

  “What’s wrong?” I probed.

  “Well,” my father said, “what if somehow or other, my mother knew that I was going to escape?” He stared at me. “You know,” he continued slowly, “she might’ve put me up to it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “That’s not what you said before.”

  “No, that’s true,” my father admitted. “I can’t remember every detail of that night. But perhaps somehow because she knew what was going to happen the next day, she hoped that one of us—me—might stand some chance of getting away. It would have been impossible for her to escape with the two little ones. Perhaps she did say something to me, like ‘Get away, son’ or ‘Go now while you can!’—something like that…”

  We sat in silence. Then my father seemed to set aside the thought and, sipping on the dregs of his cold tea, returned to what he had just been describing.

  “I started to examine the dead soldier more closely. I noticed his overcoat, and then I thought to myself, ‘Take it! He doesn’t need it!’ I tugged away at it for ages. His arms were so heavy, but somehow or other I managed to get them out of the sleeves.

  “The hardest part was getting the back of the coat from underneath him. He was a big man, and I had to keep pushing at him, trying to get him over onto his side and then to flip him over completely. But I had no luck since I kept falling over in the snow. I hunted around for a bigger stick and soon found one that I used like a lever. I pushed it under the soldier, and with all my might I managed to raise his body onto one side. And when it was raised high enough, I pushed my whole body against the soldier’s back. Quick as a flash he’d rolled over facedown, and I’d freed the coat. I was exhausted and sat down, leaning against his side for quite a while.

  “Then the real problem began,” he went on. “I had to get the coat on. But it was so enormous that I could hardly lift it off the ground. Somehow I managed to get my arms into the sleeves. Of course, I couldn’t see my hands and most of the coat was in the snow rather than on me. It was like a wedding dress where the back of it drags behind. But I didn’t care. I eventually tied most of it round me with the belt it had. I was warm for the very first time.

  “Then I thought, ‘His boots! Take his boots!’ The soldier had tied them up in such knots that my icy fingers couldn’t get them undone. But finally I tugged them off and I took his socks, too. It was heaven having them on. They went up beyond my knees. The boots were far too big for me, too, but that didn’t matter, either. The shoes I had left home in had almost fallen apart by then. I put my new boots on and wound the laces round and round my skinny ankles. I remember thinking that I looked like a clown with such big feet stretching out in front of me.

  “There was one last thing: the soldier’s cap to keep my ears warm. Lifting it off was the worst thing of all: I had to touch his face.

  “When I put the cap on it sank down over my eyes so that everything went black for a moment. I pushed it back off my face and for the first time my head wasn’t freezing cold.”

  My father gave a slight chuckle. “God knows what I looked like, paddling through the snow, half-buried in all that stuff. But only one thing I am certain of: that dead soldier saved my life.”

  “How could anyone survive this?” I wondered aloud, aghast at the picture my father was painting. He leaned forward.

  “I can tell you about that,” he said. “Don’t think about survival, just survive. That’s the answer. Once you start thinking, that’s when the trouble starts.”

  “You were a very resourceful boy,” I said.

  My father nodded, grateful for my admiration.

  “I was always alert to a noise, even the slightest one—the break of a twig, the rustle of some leaves. Anything could indicate danger. I had to be on guard every moment. It was when the sun started to go down that I would become most frightened. All sorts of sounds would start up in the forest. Things rustling in the undergrowth nearby. Wolves in the distance. A sound that still gives me goose bumps.

  “I had to be quick-thinking. You know how I’d escape from them?” he asked me. Without waiting for a response he said, “I would climb as high up as I could in a tree and wedge myself into the fork of one of the branches. I had learned to climb our apple tree when I was little. Now I could climb any tree I wanted and the wolves were never able get me, even if I fell asleep!

  “Again, I owed it all to that dead soldier. I’d use the belt from his overcoat—I’d wind it around my waist and then round and round the branch—so that I didn’t fall down. I’d wake with a start if I slumped forward too far or when the flaps of the coat had fallen open and I was too cold. Then I’d pull the coat around me and tighten the belt again to make sure that I didn’t lose my balance.

  “Sometimes I couldn’t sleep at all. I could hear noises below me in the darkness. I’d wait patiently until the sun came up. It seemed as if daylight would never come.”

  As he sp
oke of being frightened, I formed a different picture of my father. This version had none of the bravado of his fireside tales.

  “Those long nights would eventually turn into day when I could walk and scavenge, walk and scavenge, but then the dark would come back again. So that was my life and I owed it to that soldier”—he hesitated a moment and added—“and the other dead people I came across.”

  “There were others?” I cut in.

  My father nodded.

  “How many?”

  My father shrugged. “Quite a few. Whenever I came across one—they were mostly men—there was always something good growing around them. Much later, when I was with the soldiers and the weather was warmer, I’d often find wild strawberries growing around or underneath the bodies. And they were the biggest, juiciest strawberries you would ever see! I guess the bodies fertilized the soil as they decomposed.”

  “Did you come across any living people?” I asked.

  “Sometimes I did,” my father replied. “There were occasions when I heard voices in the distance or the sound of footsteps on one of the paths nearby, but I’d move away as quickly and quietly as possible and hide in the undergrowth. They must’ve been peasants or woodsmen, I guess.

  “But I did meet someone once. Properly. And that day my life was to change forever. I told you before that I was wandering in circles and that I kept coming across the same isolated cottage that I would watch from the safety of the trees. Well, one time I saw this old woman come out. She was a babushka all rigged out with her colored head scarf. I watched her as she gathered up some logs from a woodpile. Then she went back inside with them. I crept over to the window of her cottage. I was just tall enough to peep in. I could see that she was alone, cooking something in a big pot on the fire.

  “I moved across to the door and I knocked. I was nearly mad from cold and hunger. Her face appeared at the window and she rushed to open the door immediately. I remember her words exactly.

  “‘What in God’s name?’ she said. I stood there, shivering. But then she bent down and took my face in her hands. I hadn’t felt anything like the touch of another human being in a long time. Certainly not one who was alive. Her hands were covered with hard calluses, but they were so warm.

  ‘You’re freezing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come.’ I allowed her to usher me in. She sat me down by the fire and began to rub me up and down vigorously.

  “‘Whatever were you doing out there?’ she asked. ‘You must be starving,’ she added. She prepared me some soup from the pot. I don’t know how many bowls I ate. I just ate and ate. At one point she took the bowl away from me. ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘You’ll be sick.’

  “My reaction was terrible. I was like a wild animal. I growled at her and made a dive for the bowl, trying to snatch it back. I must have frightened her, because she took a few steps back. ‘Have it your own way,’ she said. Then she went to the other side of the room and sat down there, watching me. I calmed down eventually, and she slowly edged the stool closer to me until finally she was next to me again. I must have looked and smelled disgusting because I saw her flinch. She reached out her hand and touched my hair. She said that she would give me a wash. She took off my clothes and gave me a thorough wash down. I didn’t mind. I can’t tell you how happy I was at that moment.

  “She put some old clothing on me and threw my rags into the fire. She made such a face as they burned. We had a struggle, though, about the overcoat and boots. She wanted to toss them into the flames. She didn’t understand what they meant to me—they were my survival.

  “She chased me round the cottage for them, that poor old babushka. I wasn’t ever letting go of them.” My father chuckled. “I wish I could see her again,” he said. For the first time my father’s eyes moistened slightly.

  “So how long did you stay with her?” I asked.

  “Only that one night. She’d settled me down on the floor near the fire, wrapped up in a thick woolen blanket. It was the first time I had felt this degree of warmth in such a long time. I felt myself nodding off, exhausted profoundly by all my time spent tied into trees. And then something happened that changed everything in a flash. The door flew open, and this enormous hulk of a man stormed in. I thought he was an ogre from a fairy tale that my mother had told me. He was filthy and smelly.

  “He threw down the basket he was carrying and made a beeline for me. Before I knew what was happening, he’d grabbed me by both ears and dragged me out of the blanket. He lifted me off the floor so that my feet were dangling in midair. The pain in my ears was excruciating. I must have looked like a rag doll or a dead puppet.

  “The babushka tried to intervene: she seized his arm, pleading with him to put me down, but he shouted at her violently. She retreated to the far corner of the room, looking worried and frightened. I heard him call her ‘Mother,’ and then I understood why he’d barged in—it was his home and he was in charge of it.

  “Finally he released his grip on my ears, but I was still immobilized by his enormous hand tightly grasping me by the scruff of my neck. I was petrified and moved as far away from him as possible, despite his grip on me. He yanked me closer. ‘So what have we got here? Let’s get a good look at you!’ He laughed out loud, looking me up and down very slowly and coldly, like a wild beast evaluating its prey. ‘A little forest creature? No. We’ve got ourselves a little Jew here.’

  “I knew I was in danger because his tone was so threatening. The babushka must have sensed it, too, because she chose that moment to put a big bowl of soup down on the table for her son. He grunted, and for a split second he was distracted.

  “I knew I had to get out of there. I made a dash for the door. But he just reached out and grabbed me around the neck and then savagely kicked me across the room like I was a football. I lost consciousness.

  “When I came to, the pain was so bad. There was this terrible ache in my hand. While I was out of it, he’d tied my hands together with rope and then tied the rope to the leg of the table. His feet, in big heavy boots, were resting on my back, pinning me to the floor. I tried to move to relieve the pressure, but he dug his heels into my back. ‘Stay there,’ he warned me. I did as I was told while he went on eating his soup.

  “When he’d finished he undid the ropes and yanked me up by the arm. Then he lifted me into the air as if I were a rag doll and put me into his wooden basket. He tied me tightly in. I couldn’t believe it. I struggled to free myself but it was pointless.

  “He sat down by the fire and glared at me with a hideous smile. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said in a whisper, and then he indicated his throat being cut. I understood his meaning.

  “When I woke before dawn I was still tied into the basket. I remained there silently, listening to the ogre’s snores. I dozed on and off. The babushka was pottering by the fire.

  “I saw her look furtively at her son. Reassured that he was still sleeping, she then moved nearer to me and slipped me a piece of bread. But he stirred at the next moment and, fearful of him, she snatched the bread away and retreated to her corner of the room.

  “The son rose and then slung the basket with me still in it onto his back and set off from the cottage. As we moved away I saw the babushka’s face at the cottage window. She waved to me and then with a somber expression she made the sign of the cross. I had no idea where we were going.

  “By this time I’d been in the basket for hours. The pain was excruciating. I again struggled to free myself. He stopped, looked over his shoulder, and raised his hand, saying, ‘Do you want this again?’ I held my breath, even though I wanted to groan from the pain.

  “After quite some time he stopped abruptly at a gate. We’d come to a small yard next to a tiny schoolhouse. It was dusty but there was a smattering of snow on the ground. He slung the basket down and untied me. The next thing I saw were people slumped against the rear wall. They were mainly men. Of all ages.

  “A moment later I was able to take in the entire situation. On the opposite side of the yard
there were about a dozen soldiers. Some were squatted down on the ground, smoking, laughing and joking among themselves, and swigging something from a big flagon.

  “Another soldier appeared. His face was grim. He said something to the soldiers, but it was in a language I’d never heard before. The soldiers slowly got up.

  “They all had rifles with bayonets. They began to line up. Two of them prodded the people by the wall with the tips of their bayonets, shouting and kicking at them. At that moment the babushka’s son seized me around the waist, strode across the yard, and tossed me down in front of the soldiers. He laughed and said, ‘Another one for you! From the forest.’

  “I cowered before them. All I could see were the soldiers’ boots. I waited, unsure what would happen to me, and then I decided—I don’t know why—to raise my head up so I could get a clearer view of their faces.

  “I was surrounded by them. Smiling, but not in a friendly way, they all stared down at me. One of them started to kick me, forcing me to crawl toward the wall to join the others. I sat beside an old man. I felt his arm go around my shoulder. He spoke the same language as me and told me not to be frightened.

  “I held on to him. One of the soldiers ordered us all to stand up straight. Then another shouted an instruction and the other soldiers raised their guns. I knew what was to come next. I’d seen this before, in my village.”

  My father paused and then said, “I thought, ‘I’m hungry. If I am about to die, then I want something to eat before that. I want to taste bread.’

  “At that moment my eyes met the eyes of one of the soldiers, the one who appeared to be in charge. I broke away from the old man and I ran toward him, exclaiming defiantly, ‘Bread! Give me bread!’ I don’t know what prompted me to do it—something much more than hunger, I suspect.

  “One soldier hurtled toward me and roughly propelled me back into the line. The old man tried to pacify me, but something got into me. I dashed forward again. This time another soldier came at me, pointing a pistol at my head. Even now I’m sure he was going to shoot me, but before he could pull the trigger I heard the lead soldier shout out so that he lowered his weapon and the soldiers all lowered their rifles, too.