The first night in Madame Therrien’s attic room turned out to be comfortable. Uzi fell asleep under a soft down quilt while going over a list of French words. At three o’clock in the morning, he was awakened by the familiar call of the rooster. City people thought that a rooster welcomed dawn, but he crowed long before to wake up his flock so they could start foraging. The early bird got the worm.
And he must start working. The twins and, now, the boy with the star tattoo presented challenges that stumped him. He wished he could consult Hilda, although he already knew that for a little boy, clandestine entry into Eretz Israel was not an option.
Uzi opened his window onto a deep-blue sky strewn with unfamiliar constellations. After a pause for the rooster’s aria, the night sounds picked up, a concert of grinding insects and restless birds. He inhaled the smell of cut hay and chimney smoke, comfort of the familiar in a world that was utterly foreign. He missed his girlfriend, Zehava, now alone in the room that the kibbutz had allocated to the two of them when they turned eighteen. There was never talk of marriage, a bourgeois custom. A rabbi-conducted ceremony was anathema to the secular kibbutz life. Religion was a relic of the Diaspora that the kibbutz movement had shed, along with the image of the cowering Jew. The ideology of building a new nation for the Jews, for healthy men and women working the land by the sweat of the brows, had replaced the blind following of archaic rituals.
Shortly after daybreak, Uzi was back at his table in the parlor, sipping a mug of tasty coffee with cream. Diagonally across the street, at the corner of the plaza, a grocer with an eye patch opened his store. He limped with what looked like a stick inside one pant leg. A boy of about fourteen carried out a box of leafy produce, went inside, and brought out a box of apples. Uzi observed him. He couldn’t walk around assuming every dark, curly-haired boy he saw was Jewish.
But he could test a reaction.
He ambled over and stopped by a small pyramid of apples. The boy was trimming excess leaves off beets, and the tips of his fingers were bright red. “Bonjour,” Uzi said, and when the boy mumbled the same back, Uzi added in Yiddish in a low voice, “Gut margn.”
The boy snapped his head toward him, then rushed inside.
Did he think that Uzi had spoken German? After France’s tragic experience with the Nazis, Uzi must be careful. He would bide his time. Right now, he must check on the twins. The least he could do was take responsibility for the damage he had caused them.
On his way to the bus, he passed the salami shop, and the proprietor who had given him directions the day before waved him over. Inside, the man handed him a slice of salami with one hand and a note with the other.
“Une fille juive,” he said. A Jewish girl.
Yes, word about Uzi’s mission had burned through the village like fire in a field of dry thistles.
An hour later, Uzi reached the tavern. From a distance he could make out the small silhouettes of the twins seated on the doorstep, dressed in jackets. They had changed their minds and were waiting for him, he thought with glee.
His optimism evaporated when he neared and saw their sullen faces, their eyes swollen from crying. The tavern door was padlocked.
He crouched before the boys. “I’m sorry to bring you trouble,” he said in Hebrew, hoping that his tone would carry his sincerity. “On va en Israël,” he tried, using his newly acquired French words. “Kibbutz?”
The boys shouted, “Non! Kibbutz, non, Israël, non!”
Uzi was at a loss for what to do next. Because of him, they were no longer welcomed in the only home they knew. He withdrew the slip of paper and pointed to the name Châteauroux. He could deposit them there with the Protestant minister. “Israël, non,” he said. At least not until Hilda or Pastor Gaspard convinced them that it was their best option.
They picked up a bundle each and began to walk. Their despondency gathered in their thin shoulders and their dragged feet. It pinched Uzi’s heart. What had he done? How was it a rescue when there had been no threat of death?
As they cut through the field to the main road, Uzi spotted broken stakes of an old fence. He picked up one, grabbed both its ends, and held it straight in front of him as the boys had seen him do the day before. He pointed to more stakes on the ground, and after the boys had picked up one each, he demonstrated a kapap move.
Within seconds, they were into the game. He showed them how to protect their faces and another move to overcome an opponent’s stick by twisting it and pushing him down with barely a touch.
“Kapap,” he called out like a war cry.
“Kapap,” they repeated. They faced each other and, shouting, showed off the new moves. They were back to being just children.
“I’ve messed up badly,” he told Hilda when she opened the door.
“First let me speak with them.” She rested soft eyes on the boys and addressed them in French. “Come in.”
Twenty minutes later, she sent them out to the backyard to play. Uzi could see them through the window, practicing the kapap moves.
“Don’t be so harsh on yourself.” Hilda’s thin face looked even pointier with her gray hair brushed into a neat bun. Her quick smile, though, was reassuring. “They had to be taken out of there. The future of the Jewish people hinges on reclaiming every last child.”
“It’s about these two boys,” he replied, “not about world Jewry.”
“What’s the difference? Their parents were murdered because they were Jewish. Their wishes for how they wanted to raise their children were clear. The only question is what kind of Jewish environment is best for them.” Her hand rested on an open page in her ledger. “Before deportation, the family was Orthodox, and the boys attended a yeshiva. Only when they went into hiding did they cut off their peos.” She was referring to the long side curls. “We’ll place them in an OSE Orthodox orphanage. Their schooling was interrupted, but they’ll be back in a familiar cultural environment.”
She brought Uzi a cup of coffee and a scone with berry marmalade. “Help me reconstruct their four transfers in case a relative comes searching.”
When they were done, Uzi grabbed his backpack and got up. “Onward to the next kid.”
He halted at the door. An open jeep came to a stop, and a soldier in an American army uniform jumped out. He lifted a box from the jeep’s floor, smiled broadly, and headed toward him.
Puzzled, Uzi retreated back inside as Hilda stepped forward, a big smile on her face.
After Hilda and the American soldier had exchanged the double air kisses, she told Uzi in English, “Meet one of our angels, Robert Weintraub.” Then she pointed to Uzi and told Weintraub, “And you meet one of our heroes, Uzi Yarden.”
Her words gave Uzi no more clue about the identity of the soldier who excitedly pumped his hand. “From Ayelet HaShachar,” Uzi said. “It’s a kibbutz in the Galilee.”
“From Philadelphia. It’s a city in the USA.”
They both laughed. They were about the same age. Robert’s uniform was starched and pressed, and his shoes shone. Uzi was aware of his own limp cotton pants and frayed shirt, the hue indistinct after hundreds of washes in the kibbutz’s laundry shed. His hair, streaked by the sun, hadn’t been cut in weeks. He’d given up on the shoes, and his feet in the beaten leather sandals were unwashed.
“What’s going on?” he asked Hilda in Yiddish.
“Jewish soldiers in the American army are helping us,” she replied in English. “They are our liaisons with displaced-persons camps. They help with transportation and supply our network with food for our children.”
“Speaking of food.” Robert opened the box he’d brought and pulled out cans and packages. With a flair, he waved one dark brown packet labeled coffee, then withdrew a wrapped chocolate bar. “Garçons,” he called to Tobias and Elias, who were staring from the doorway. He broke off a piece for each, and when they put them in their mouths, their faces expanded with delight.
