Uzi crouched and held him tight. “She’s in heaven,” he whispered, rocking him, helpless at the sight of such grief. “But she loves you and watches over you.”
The strange language halted the boy’s crying. He stared at Uzi with his beautiful, big eyes but didn’t laugh as he had done a couple of days earlier.
“Manger?” Uzi asked in French. Eat? He carried him back downstairs and wiped the boy’s face and hands with a damp towel. “Dai’sa,” he said. Porridge. He sprinkled brown sugar on it and brought a spoonful to the boy’s mouth.
The boy smacked his lips at the unfamiliar taste, then opened his mouth for more. After two more spoonfuls, Uzi handed him the utensil to feed himself and guided the little hand to demonstrate how to scoop from the top.
“Nom?” Uzi asked. “Je m’appelle Uzi.”
“Daniel,” the boy replied.
“Well, Daniel, I’m sure you know this song.” Uzi broke into the Hebrew version of “Frère Jacques.” Daniel giggled at the funny words and joined in French. Uzi loved his bell-like voice.
Breakfast over, he planted a goodbye kiss on top of the boy’s matted hair. Tonight, he would give him a proper bath at Madame Therrien’s. Afterward, Uzi would take his meager belongings and depart this village. There was nothing more he could do for him.
During his travels that day, Uzi decided, he would look for a toy seller. He pictured the delight on Daniel’s face when he gave him a train. Uzi would teach him the Hebrew word for it, rake’vet, and sing him the train song. The onomatopoeic chugging of wheels and piercing whistle would be understood in any language.
Before mounting his bike, Uzi stopped outside the grocery store and picked up a rock-hard late-season pear. The paucity of good fresh produce in such a fertile land irked him.
“Gut margn,” he said quietly when the teenager approached.
“Gut margn,” the boy responded. His body was like a coiled spring. His shoulders, torso, then one knee jerked.
Their eyes met in a shared recognition. “I’m from Eretz Israel, from a kibbutz,” Uzi said in Yiddish, speaking low. “Do you know what a kibbutz is?”
The boy shrugged, busying himself lining up a row of white asparagus stalks.
“It’s a large group living together, many families creating one family where everyone is equal. We have orange groves and fields of vegetables, and we raise herds of sheep and cows. But we are building something bigger.” Uzi paused, certain that the boy understood. “A nation. Together we are stronger than any of us alone. We are building a country for the Jews where we hold ourselves proud, never having to hide, and we’re willing to fight for it.”
The boy’s eyes brightened with interest. “Do you fight with guns?”
“Only if we must. My name is Uzi Yarden. What’s yours?”
“Arthur Durand.”
“When do you finish working today? We can talk then.”
“Seven o’clock. I live here. I sleep in the attic.”
Just then, a woman approached. She was in her forties and wore an elegant hat and what Uzi could tell was a city dress—so different from the simple printed cotton shifts that the village women wore under their aprons. She didn’t carry a basket; she was neither delivering produce nor shopping. Her differences put Uzi on alert.
“Gut margn,” she said. “Who exactly are you?”
“Uzi Yarden. And you?”
“I am Ruth Morgenstern. I am from the Jewish Organization for the Protection of Children.”
“Nice to meet you. I hear that OSE has been doing an incredible job.”
“I’d like to inform you that if you want to recruit Arthur for your Zionist project, you must go through us.”
So, word about him had spread even further. Uzi was annoyed by the woman’s tone but conceded that if OSE had placed Arthur here, Ruth Morgenstern’s request was reasonable. She must have a dossier on his family and his health history. Uzi tore half a page from his notebook and handed it to her with a pencil. “Ruth—”
“Mrs. Morgenstern,” she corrected.
“Mrs. Morgenstern, please write down how we may contact you. After I speak with Arthur, of course.”
The boy stopped pretending to arrange vegetables. His eyes were fixed on Uzi, but his arm jerked, then a knee shook, as if his body were inhabited by mice. At least someone was checking on him in this godforsaken enclave, Uzi thought. This nervous boy wasn’t completely abandoned.
“What I mean is that we have a department that handles children heading to Palestine,” Ruth said. “No need to duplicate efforts.”
“You’re right that there’s no need to duplicate efforts—if indeed that’s what we’re doing.” Uzi leveled his gaze at her. “The question is, when will a kid such as Arthur actually travel there?” Both of them knew the British were blocking entry of Holocaust survivors.
“Our Tel Aviv office receives the entry certificates to Palestine and distributes them among legitimate organizations,” she replied.
The place she called Palestine, as the British did, was the country the yishuv and Diaspora Jews hoping to live there referred to as Eretz Israel. Her use of the British name told Uzi that she wasn’t buying into the Zionist nation-building dream of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land.
“First, we’ve waited two thousand years to return to our homeland. We owe it to these children to settle them with no further delays.” Piqued by her insinuation, he added, “Second, for the record, Youth Aliyah is a legitimate organization headed by the distinguished Henrietta Szold. The Haganah’s involvement in this project has the support of most Israelis. It’s the bureaucracy—of both the British rulers and organizations like yours—that the Youth Aliyah is circumventing.”
“Arthur!” someone called from inside the store.
“We won’t put our children in danger.” The woman laid a gentle hand on Arthur’s shoulder and said to him, “If what you want is to go to Palestine, we’ll transfer you to our institution in Toulouse. You’ll even study Hebrew there.”
Arthur’s eyes darted between Ruth Morgenstern and Uzi. Uzi hated the fact that the boy was a witness to the confrontation, especially one this futile. Hilda would not engage in a conflict with OSE over one child who was already being supervised. Yet instead of living in Israel and learning Hebrew, Arthur would wait in France for months on end to restart his interrupted life. What unending anxiety must fill the soul of a boy like this, standing between two adults representing two opposing worldviews.
“Arthur!” The grocer leaned against the doorway.
“He’s yours,” Uzi said to Ruth Morgenstern. He tipped his head in respect to the grocer and pulled Arthur to the side. He reached into his backpack and took out the mezuzah he’d found. “You’re in good hands, young man. To show my faith that you will have a home in the Holy Land, here is something that one day you’ll place on the threshold of your home.” He touched Arthur’s arm. “Shalom.”
