A Day of Small Beginnings Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
     fields to avoid being seen. Every few minutes he looked nervously back at Zokof, as if the town itself would give chase and
     attack him like a peasant’s dog.
    When no one appeared to be coming after him, he relaxed. I looked back to Zokof too. Shuli’s innocent face floated above it,
     contorted by a terrible grief. She’s lost the boy she loved, I thought. Oh, the pity of a girl in love with Itzik. It was
     easier for him to hate God than to believe he was entitled to lift his eyes to look at her.
    By midmorning, we’d reached the paved streets of Radom. Pots of red and white flowers decorated the high doorsteps of the
     brick row houses, but I’m sure Itzik didn’t notice them. From the way he kept bobbing his head around every corner, checking
     his direction, I guessed he had never been there before. He hid under the cap he’d pulled over his face and carefully wound
     his way through the crowded streets, skirting the noisy open stalls in the market square, until he reached the train station.
    The stationmaster, a Pole with eyes blue and careless as the sea, looked down with a certain disdainful amusement at the ragged
     Jewish child digging in his bundle for the fare. Out tumbled the money bag. As Itzik grabbed it up, I could see his confusion
     at discovering his mother’s gift. He hesitated, ground his jaw until the muscles rippled across the sides of his face, and
     for a moment I thought he might even turn back to Zokof. But slowly, without lifting his head, he muttered to the stationmaster,
     “A ticket for Warsaw, mister.”
    The stationmaster turned to the porter squatting on a stool behind him, and said, “What’s this, Pawel? Another Yid?”
    The porter, all of whose features were squashed against his flat face as if he’d been hit by a skillet, stood up and nodded
     in Itzik’s direction. “They say Warsaw is full of Jewish fleas like that one.” The words whistled through the gap in his mouth
     where his front teeth used to be. “Watch you don’t give someone an itch, boy.” He lurched over the counter and smacked Itzik’s
     shoulder.
    Itzik shrank back. His hand, which had been reaching up to receive the ticket, now hovered in midair, staving off further
     attack. The gesture provoked the stationmaster and the porter to howls of laughter that shook the walls of the stationhouse.
    I watched Itzik’s eyes go slack, as if he didn’t have anything to say to them because he saw himself as they saw him—inferior,
     unacceptable. The boy had nothing inside to give him strength. I felt the heat of danger all around. A Jew can’t afford to
     be so starved in his soul. Not when he lives in a country where insults to his character roll off the tongues of strangers
     every day, cool as idle chatter.
    In 1863, when the Poles tried to oust the Russians from our part of the world, my father, may his name be blessed, spoke to
     some headstrong young Jews who wanted to join the rebellion and show the Poles they were nationalists too. Poppa had tapped
     his finger on his Talmud and said, “This is where you show what you’re made of. Here, in a house of learning. Out there is
narrishkeit,
foolishness. Why should you fight their battles? They don’t trust you. ‘Christ killers,’ ‘host poisoners.’ This is what they
     think of you! Just remember this. Poland without Jews is like a barren woman. It produces nothing but sausage.” He laughed.
     But his laughter was as angry as the stationmaster’s and the porter’s, the sound of two sovereign people resentfully sharing
     the same sad scrap of land.
    The stationmaster flicked Itzik’s ticket in front of him. “Get along, boy,” he said. “Go to America. Poland is for Poles.”
    Such a rage and shame came over me, who had promised Itzik’s mother that I would protect him. And here I was, as helpless
     a woman in death as in life, unable to keep this child safe, to nourish him any more than his mother.
Nourish him,
I renewed my vow. As