“Don’t be afraid, Zalman. That’s just Frau Blanc, the widow who owns this barn, this farm, what is left of it, that is.” He addressed the squat woman, who bore a heavy bag in both her arms and, expressionless, settled it down on the floor.
“Frau, this is my friend Zalman, who has also escaped from the town and found his way here.” Then, turning to the boy: “Zalman, meet Frau Blanc, my savior, and soon to be yours too.”
Zalman looked at the woman, then followed Jacob down the ladder. The Frau stood silently as the boys ripped open the cloth sack, laying bare its contents. Soft-boiled eggs, a loaf of black bread, five knockwurst sausages, a container of fresh milk still cold from the freezer. A trove of riches!
Zalman watched as Jacob cracked open one of the eggs and sucked the juices out. Zalman took the loaf of bread in hand, tore off a piece, and let the starchy taste fill his mouth before swallowing. As they ate, Frau Blanc stood in heavy black boots and a gray coat, watching them. Then she walked over to the cage of chickens that, filled with anticipation, were running frantically from corner to corner. She took a handful of seeds and scattered them in the cage as the chickens fought for their share. Then she walked over to the pig, which didn’t bother to raise its head, patted its side where the bones protruded, and lay down a carrot, leaves and all. She approached the boys and watched as they ate.
“Smakuje dobrze?” she asked, her voice flat, heavy. The two nodded that all was good, not stopping to answer, as they relished the victuals.
Zalman now had a good view of her round face, or rather the wrinkles, for there were so many folds in the cheeks that one could barely make out a face, just watery green eyes, an upturned nose, thin lips whose inscrutability evoked the Mona Lisa. The woman stood for a while, staring at the two. Then, without a word, she left the barn, pulling the door shut behind her.
The boys, their bellies full, followed the shaft of sunlight as it sparkled, then disappeared, as the door creaked shut. All that was left now was the single beam that flashed from the hole in the roof, and, in a matter of hours, that, too, would be extinguished.
Later, Jacob explained that his father’s cousins had been neighbors once to Frau Blanc and her husband. They were fine people, quietly sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. Jacob himself had never met the couple, didn’t even remember the cousins, and yet his father had instructed him, repeating the admonition as the times grew more perilous: If anything should happen, make your way to the farmhouse at the edge of the woods. If anything should happen . . .
Jacob wasn’t sure how long it had been since he arrived, sweating and out of breath, at the Frau’s door, just a few yards from the decrepit barn. Without question, she had taken him in, shown him where to hide, how he could stay silent. There had been others before him, she revealed, but never told him who they were, how they had found her, or, more important, what had become of them. And Jacob didn’t ask. In the same way she had accepted their presence then, it was no surprise that she acquiesced at the sight of Zalman. Frau Blanc was a woman of few words, but her actions, at least the way Jacob saw it, were thunderous.
Jacob figured that he had been hidden in the hayloft for weeks, perhaps even months now. And although he never admitted it, he was glad for Zalman’s presence.
It was perhaps many more days, weeks, each sunrise and sunset folding into the other, that the two spent up in the hayloft. They sometimes talked as they bit into a wedge of cheese brought by Frau Blanc on one of her now-more-than-weekly appearances. They fashioned games of hide-and-go-seek, one hiding behind the chicken coop, or burying himself within the straw. They told each other fanciful stories of knights in battle and Martians with giant brains, all from other worlds, coming to save them.
Sometimes, when the silence became too oppressive and neither could sleep, Jacob had no choice but to listen to Zalman’s endless questions. He would ask Jacob about his life at home before all the madness. What was his father’s occupation? What sorts of dishes did his mother like to cook? Did he, like Zalman, have a brother or a sister who would play soldiers or read books with him? But then Jacob would clench his mouth shut, knowing that when, as the moonlight streamed through the hole in the roof, Zalman saw the angry look in his eyes, Zalman would finally stop asking questions. Instead, he spoke more about himself, how he loved the tangy taste of his mother’s goulash on cold nights or the way his father hummed Yiddish melodies to himself when he thought no one was listening.
But there was one thing Jacob did share with the boy. On particularly cold nights, Jacob told him about his dream of building a house in a land he had never been to—of the colors, the texture of the rugs, the flowers in the garden. Zalman listened intently, imagining as if he himself were setting foot into the brightly lit foyer for a visit with friends. The boys tried to form a schedule so that their days had order, a semblance of normalcy, and so when blackness pervaded the barn and they could hear only the sounds of the night, a cricket, the pig snoring on the dirt floor, Jacob and Zalman slept. But always with one eye open.