The Mascot Page 7

  “A few of them began muttering among themselves, seemingly resentful because the lead soldier had intervened and they couldn’t get on with the shooting.

  “Instinctively I knew that I had to do something at that moment to make the atmosphere less tense. I stepped forward and thrust out my distended stomach to emphasize how hungry I was. To make sure they all understood, I started to mime eating a piece of bread, all the while chanting, ‘Bread! Bread! Give me bread!’

  “It must have looked comical because I saw the glimmer of a smile cross the lead soldier’s face. I was scared but I trusted him. He had warm eyes. I started to think of him as the good soldier. Then some of the other soldiers burst out laughing. They were distracted by my jigging about. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that some of the prisoners had begun to sidle away. I hoped they’d escape. But just then the good soldier noticed them, too. Immediately he fired his pistol in the air and everything went deadly quiet. The other soldiers rounded up the escapees.

  “At that point, the good soldier took me by the wrist and led me across to the building. Even though I felt I would be safe in his hands, I still struggled against him, digging my heels into the ground. He yanked me even harder until we reached the entrance. Then he turned back to the soldiers and indicated that they should hurry up with their task.

  “The good soldier pulled me farther into the schoolhouse and threw me down onto the floor. I kicked out at him wildly and he tried to slap me but I ducked. The soldier chuckled and then I began to laugh as well and this broke the tension. ‘So, you want bread?’ he asked me. He spoke to me in my language. I nodded.

  “He pulled out a dirty cloth from his pocket and unwrapped it. It contained a piece of bread. He held it out to me. At that moment it was more precious than gold! I made a lunge for it and scampered away with it to the corner of the room, where I gnawed away at the rock-hard lump like a rat.

  “The soldier tried to cajole me into parting with the bread. He stretched out his open hand to me, all the time staring me in the eye. I gripped it close to my chest. But one part of me trusted this soldier, so that eventually I passed him the bread. The soldier pretended to eat it, which drove me to spring up at him, trying desperately to rip it out of his hand, but he held me back at arm’s length, dangling the bread in his other. Then the sound of his laughter made me realize that it was nothing more than a game, and my rage gave way to pleasure. I was giggling in a way that I had not done since I was with friends back in my village.

  “The soldier tore the bread into morsels and passed them to me one by one, indicating that I should chew them more slowly. Then he passed me his flask and I took a big swig, thinking it was water. But it was alcoholic. It burned me up inside and I nearly passed out.

  “Then all of a sudden there was a sound like a cracking of thunder. I’d heard this sound before: the day my family died. I was petrified and ran to the schoolhouse window, hoping to escape that way, but he dragged me firmly back across the room. ‘Stay!’ he barked angrily. I did as instructed and watched as he paced back and forth: something else was clearly bothering him. Suddenly he stopped and stared at me. I thought I was done for and that he had decided to take me outside to be shot.

  “He came closer and grasped me by the shoulders, telling me to stand up straight. He crouched down beside me and slowly began to remove the rags that I had on. I flinched.”

  My father suddenly seemed shy and embarrassed.

  “The soldier looked reluctant, but he indicated that I had to lower my pants. I did what I was told. He inspected me, only for a moment, then he turned away. I hastily covered myself. He kept his back to me but was shaking his head, saying, ‘No good, no good, no good!’ I looked inside my pants. ‘What is no good?’ I wondered.

  “I knew something was seriously wrong, so I tried to copy the soldier’s stern expression, just to make him laugh, but he wouldn’t. My childish antics only seemed to fuel his annoyance so that he began shaking me and whispering harshly, ‘No good. Stupid.’

  “Slowly he calmed down. He sat down on an empty crate and lit up a cigarette. Then he pulled me onto his lap. He seemed to be considering something. This time I waited quietly.

  “After several minutes he stood me up in front of him. He was grimfaced. ‘Never let anyone look at you!’ he warned me. He nodded his head in the direction of—you know—what’s down below, and then shook his head sternly. Again he said, ‘No good,’ and then he held his pistol to his head, pressing the business end of it several times against his temple in order to rub in the point.

  “I mimed holding a pistol to my head, with my other hand pointing at my groin, again wanting to believe it was all a game. The soldier finally had had enough of me and jerked me across to the window. He lifted me up so that I could see that the prisoners were now all lying on the ground.

  “None of them moved and the soldiers were stumbling about among them, checking them for valuables. Then the good soldier turned his head and looked at me in this very forbidding way. It was then that I understood the seriousness of what he was warning me about—that this could be my fate, too, if anybody saw what was ‘no good’ about me.

  “He told me to wait in the schoolhouse. When he left I heard him bar the door behind him. I dragged a stool to the window and watched as he rejoined the other soldiers, who quickly formed a circle around him.

  “The good soldier seemed to be trying to convince the others about something. I saw him point to the schoolhouse. It dawned on me that he was talking about me.

  “The soldiers were not happy and from where I was I could hear raised voices. They shook their heads vehemently and kicked at the ground, raising dust everywhere.

  “The horrible soldier, the one who’d wanted to shoot me, broke away from the circle, spitting on the ground. Then another soldier joined him. I saw the good soldier quiet everyone down with his hand. He spoke again, and this time some of the soldiers nodded. They seemed to be coming round to whatever the good soldier was suggesting.

  “I jumped to the floor and moved about the room, which was piled up with furniture. That’s when I noticed something in the corner: an enormous crate. I decided to look inside. The lid was hard to lift, but I managed to shift it just enough to get a look inside. It was full of rifles. Without a moment’s pause, I said to myself, ‘I’ll shoot them all. I’ll work out how to use the guns and then I’ll shoot them all from the window!’” My father seemed astonished by what he’d tried to do.

  “I dragged one of the guns out of the crate and across to the window. It weighed almost as much as me. I couldn’t work out how to use it and quickly gave up on the plan. I decided to snatch another peek from the window. It was lucky I did because at that exact moment I saw the soldiers nodding and then the good soldier suddenly turned and headed back toward the schoolhouse. I ducked quickly before anybody saw me at the window and hurried to hide the gun behind the crate, but I wasn’t quick enough because just then the soldier came in. Fortunately, he had no inkling of what I’d been planning and instead he told me that soon he’d teach me how to take aim and shoot.

  “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 pisto
l. 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.