The Accidental Anarchist (28 page)

Scarcely had I arrived at this noble decision when I was seized by the kind of drugged sleep from which, less than a year earlier, only a cluster of incoming artillery could have shaken me.

In the end, what ruptured my sleep was not the cold glare of the dawning sun but the nightmare of a monstrous shadow flapping its wings above my face. In a fierce rush of air, the Creature burst at me like a cannonball, intent on pecking out my eyes.

I rolled sideways, trying to convince myself that it was only a dream, no worse than most, while its beak slashed at my arms and eyes and shoulders. Only the sharp stick in my hand hindered my attacker from taking more substantial bites out of my flesh.

What did that bird want from me? Only then did I notice that I had made my bed right next to a nest of large speckled eggs of a type that weren’t meant to be eaten. Holding on to the tree with one hand, I ducked and parried with my primitive spear as the winged beast, attended now by a squadron of relatives, friends and neighbors, tore through a cloud of dry leaves to get at me for the kill. Already it had shredded my sleeve. Blood spurted out of my arm, but I was too excited to be conscious of the pain.

In all the commotion, Pyavka had rather slipped my mind until I felt his bulk drop past me, snapping branches and nearly pulling me down with him. He slammed into the ground and remained sprawled, silent as snow.

The giant birds, awed by the violence of his fall, gleefully wheeled off into the sky.

With thumping heart, I jumped down to see if my friend was still alive. As I drew back one of his lids, he groaned with annoyance at being awakened. Only then did I notice that my forearm was losing blood. Pyavka, exercising his medical skills, peeled off a soiled strip of cloth and bandaged the spot where the bird had taken a nip out of my flesh.

At this point, neither of us was eager to climb back into the tree to finish our night’s sleep. So we sat together, dozing intermittently, until a smear of pearly gray light revealed the horizon, although not from the direction I had thought was east. Which left me to wonder whether, up here, more or less next door to the North Pole, “east” meant something different than it did in Poland.

Pyavka sat up abruptly. “Where is our bread?” His voice carried a scowl of accusation, and he dropped to his knees. His frantic fingers groped for the shallow hole in which we had hidden our rations. I wanted to be helpful, but faced with a sun rising from the wrong end of the sky, I was no longer sure in which tree we had slept.

“A soldier you call yourself?” Pyavka grumbled. Then he cried out, in triumph, or rage. He had tripped over our water bottle and almost broken it. But there was our bread, fully intact, except for what resembled a set of teeth marks. To avoid any strain on our friendship, we hastily attributed them to some species of animal not burdened with our human sense of ethics.

Although a drizzle of sunlight filtered through the trees, the frost under my naked soles was sharp as splintered glass. It weakened my resolve to hold off wearing the shoes I had saved from traveling to the bottom of the river with their owner. I reached into the bag, and my heart sank into my bowels. Some scoundrel in our barracks had exchanged them for a different pair that fell apart the moment I tried to walk in them.

Pyavka found this to be a good moment for irony. “My friend, you forget; among the noble souls our Little Father banished to Siberia, there may have been one or two actual thieves.”

I started to laugh, which was just as well since it did me no less good than a sputter of curses.

We examined our diminished loaf of bread from every angle, and comforted each other with the lie that, by exercising a bit of self-control, we might stretch it to last four more days.

What I didn’t reveal to Pyavka, who was depressed enough already, was that I hadn’t a clue where we were or in which direction we were headed. Nor did I dare guess what would happen when our bread ran out. Which, no matter how bravely we talked, was certain to be by tomorrow.

Shoulders propped against the rugged skin of an ancient tree, we shared our day’s ration. But the bread only stimulated our hunger more cruelly. To divert ourselves from the tormenting images of food, we let our fantasies roam. Assuming that we made it as far as the railroad, by some miracle got our hands on “good papers” and even came up with money for tickets, in which direction should we travel – toward Europe, home? Or through the unmapped vastness of China, Korea, Japan? Pyavka, in his ignorance, pictured a coastline crowded with steamers waiting to depart for the Golden Land, non-stop to Chicago or wherever. Surely, at least one of those ships would have space for two more bodies, whether as crewmen, passengers or stowaways.

As he saw it, once safely in America we would simply cable our families to pack up and join us, money being no object as Chicago, all the world knew, was a city made for thieves.

That evening, under a vanishing sky, my partner and I vowed, once again, to take turns standing watch. As before, we only had trouble agreeing who would take the second shift.

With the shameless eloquence of a born lawyer, Pyavka reminded me that in Warsaw he was, like most rich men, accustomed to staying up late and sleeping late. Whereas I, having spent my adult years in unskilled trades such as soldiering and baking bread, ought to be well used to going without sleep. Worn down by his logic, I capitulated.

“You gave in too easily,” he charged. “You are planning to wait until I’m asleep, and then eat my share of the bread.”

“How do I know you wouldn’t do the same?”

“Ha! An honest man wouldn’t have such thoughts.”

“And what about you?”

“I am a thief. For me it’s natural to think that way.”

I knew this circular wrangling could go on for hours. I don’t know how his wife put up with it. Like me, I suppose, she had no choice.

Sometime during this conversation, Pyavka fell asleep. I watched him snore, his cheeks glowing with contentment born of a spotless conscience. Soon I was tormented by aromatic visions of our common chunk of bread. Especially since Pyavka had placed it squarely under his head, which I found insulting. Was his skull so soft that he needed bread for a pillow? Or did he not trust me? In which case, would it not serve him right if I paid back his ugly suspicion by stealing a piece, a mere sliver, the thickness of a fingernail, purely on principle?

While engaged in these dark speculations, I, too, dozed off. And by the time I could think of awakening Pyavka for his turn to stand watch, the sun had long since shed its blood across the sky. With aching bones, I lay back down to snatch a few minutes of rest, while my partner, refreshed, booted and impatient, grumbled that my “sleeping disease” was costing him valuable time.

Chapter 24: Into the Woods

Dawn rose, heavy as lead. After days of walking without seeing any evidence of human ingenuity, I climbed a tree, hoping to get a fresh perspective on the world. Moments later, I jumped back down and shook my partner out of his sleep. What I had seen bore every sign of a man-made path.

We hiked for some hours without finding so much as an empty vodka bottle, let alone a human footprint.

Pyavka sat down and announced he could not go one more step. I reminded him that he had been saying that almost hourly for as long as we’d been walking. But this time, as proof he really meant it, he offered me his money, his boots and his tearful blessings.

In no mood for sentimental gestures, I told him that if he really wanted to give me his boots, I’d be glad to help him remove them.

At which heartless response my partner looked up and decided I was joking. So instead of giving me his shoes, he draped his face in a broad smile, groaned back to his feet, and proclaimed to all the world that by not abandoning him to die here, I, Yakov Marateck, proved that I was one of the saintly "
Thirty Six
," just as I had once naively suspected of him. Pyavka then grabbed my hand and overwhelmed it with kisses. It was only because I didn’t have the strength to make a fist that I was able to keep from hitting him.

Suddenly, he said, “Do you hear it?”

“Hear what?” But, a moment later, the shriek of the whistle was unmistakable. In an instant, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and pain were forgotten as we ran and lurched and limped in the direction of that life-restoring shriek.

Within the hour, we glimpsed telegraph wires, followed by the blessed sight of iron tracks. Pyavka flung himself across the rails and embraced them, while I looked in both directions, hoping to spot a depot or some other form of human habitation. This brought us up sharply against the delicate question of where, assuming we managed to reach a depot, we would get enough money for two tickets home.

Pyavka gave me a pitying look. Was he not “The King of Thieves?” Just turn him loose among the passengers, and before the conductor even knew we were on board, he would have “earned” enough to take us both, not just to Warsaw but, if we wanted, all the way to Berlin, Paris, even New York, traveling first class all the way.

I had no reason to doubt his felonious skills. I wondered only if he had already forgotten that even those who had tickets also needed to produce such treasures as a passport and a travel permit.

He glowered and shook his head. “Always the pessimist.”

We had been walking along the tracks since early that morning without seeing or hearing any sign of human life. By this time, the sun had shriveled to a flat white circle, no brighter and no warmer than a small coin.

At the very edge of darkness, I spotted something that made me mistrust my eyes. Of course, I was hungry, Pyavka’s and my inability to trust each other had resulted in our consuming our bread rations well ahead of schedule. But seeing my partner’s gaze fixed in the direction of my mirage, I blinked again and saw a prettily built cottage surrounded by a wilderness of dwarf pines. The very existence of this image was so fantastic that its walls might as well have been made of gingerbread.

Clutching my ridiculous spear, I scouted ahead. As in the fairy tale, all seemed improbably inviting. All except for a neatly painted sign whose message, deciphered by the light of a match, advised in blunt military terms that trespassers would be severely dealt with.

Lightheaded with hunger yet afraid to knock, I stood on an upturned pail and peered through half-drawn curtains into an old-fashioned sitting room aglow in the halo of an oil lamp. A sharp elbow nearly threw me off my perch. Crowding my ear, Pyavka declared that, in his experience, lamps didn’t light themselves. Therefore—

We debated in a fierce whisper how dangerous it would be to knock on the door. Pyavka held that, since I spoke Russian and looked, to his eyes, more like a typical
Vanya
, I ought to be the one to introduce myself.

“As what? An escaped convict?”

Nose pressed to the cold glass, I gawked once more into a room equipped with good furniture, a gleaming samovar, and a table covered with a lace cloth. A young woman’s face suddenly broke into my line of vision. Captivated, I stared at her pale, gaunt features until she caught sight of my flattened nose and bulging eyes, and cried out in alarm.

I jumped off the pail and blindly ran. Back among the trees, I paused and cowered, breathlessly waiting to see if anyone was pursuing us. To my astonishment, the Lady stood in her open door and, betraying no fear, motioned us to approach.

Pyavka vigorously shook his head. I shared his mistrust. But after so many days without bread, my brief sprint had drained my strength and my caution. “She invited us in,” I said.

“Maybe you she invited.”

“I’m hungry.”

“So am I. But I’m not stupid.”

Denied my sympathy, he grumbled as though I were Moses navigating the horizonless desert under direct guidance from the One Above, and all I needed to do was to let Him know our exact map coordinates for where to drop the manna.

In no mood to listen, I dropped my spear and approached the door, gliding on its outflow of light and warmth until I came face to face with a woman whose long, black hair was streaked with white. I bowed my head in greeting. She responded with a smile of such piercing sadness that I was mute with confusion.

Once inside the cottage, I noticed that the rough-hewn walls gleamed with delicate gilt paintings of an infant being cradled in the arms of what looked like a somewhat inexperienced mother. I knew what icons were, but I had never seen one at close range.

A knock jolted me out of my trance. I turned to see Pyavka enter the cottage. I saw at once that he knew far better than I how to conduct himself with ladies of breeding. Dumb with envy, I watched the courtly tilt of his body as, clearly back in his element, he bowed to kiss the knuckles of her hand.

The Lady smiled at his
Varsovian
manners, but her eyes included me in her question, “Where are you from?”

Pyavka looked to me for enlightenment. I explained, “He is a Pole; he doesn’t speak Russian.”

“Ah, a Pole. With that beard, I took him for a Jew.”

What I found odd about that remark was that she would comment on his beard and not on the more obvious feature of our convict clothing.

“You’re not Russian either, are you?” she said to me. “Although no one would know it from the way you speak.”