Jakob’s Colors Read Online Free PDF Page B

once again at the tree. He sees it upon that green mound. Leafless, twisted and shaped like a Y. Sees it bone white in the moonlight, silver against the sun. And his brother’s sweet face. Malutki, his eyes wide, fleetingly fearful. Hot hands . . . hot breath, despite the dawn cold . . . and that look that cut between trust and uncertainty. “It’s all right, Malutki. It’s all right,” Jakob had assured him.
    Jakob crouches lower, unable to draw his eyes from the face of this man, who is fingering his stubbled jaw as if to reset it from a journey’s slumber. It takes only the distance from the truck to the nearest stall for the officer’s body to awaken; for the faint military flourish, the straightness of his spine, the frenetic activity that seems to accompany his every move, to return. His eyes slide over the scene before him, minatory suddenly with an alertness that seems to take in everything and anything. The soldiers around him are stocking up, filling wooden crates with whatever they choose at random. The stalls are ravaged, one by one, emptied with a rough efficiency that leaves behind a mess of the discarded; the old, the bruised, the battered, a debris of the unwanted.
    â€œYou work here, boy?” The voice sounds above him, a golden voice, husky and resonant as honey.
    Jakob keeps his head down, pushes his quivering fingers into his pockets, and nods.
    â€œYou work here with whom?”
    Jakob cannot find his voice. There is only silence inside him.
    â€œHe is here with me,” Walther says, standing tall behind his stall, and from his breast pocket he pulls out his papers. The officer takes them, looks over each word. His skin smells of cologne, his breath of licorice. Finally he lifts his head and stares at Jakob. He hardly blinks.
    â€œYou are afraid?” the officer asks eventually, handing Walther back his papers. Jakob still says nothing. He cannot.
    â€œYou are afraid?” the officer asks again, sterner, determined of a response.
    â€œYes,” Jakob whispers. Tears spill from his eyes, run hot down his filthy cheeks.
    The officer shakes his head. He looks almost sad. “Men are never afraid. You’re a man, aren’t you? Aren’t you? So then. Stand up. Stand up and show me your papers.”
    Behind him the soldiers are clambering back onto the trucks that are weighted down now with what they have taken. The market is coming back to life. There is the chatter of dismay. Fears, tenuously voiced. The toothless woman is weeping loudly for the loss of her rabbits. The officer turns, irritated by her sobs, moves angrily up the aisle toward her.
    â€œYou must go,” Walther whispers. “Without papers? You must run. Don’t worry. I will find you. Wait for me in the woods. You know how to make a smokeless fire. You can survive anything with a smokeless fire. Now go.”
    Up ahead the woman has ceased her crying and the officer with his hand-embroidered white silk and his nuggets of aluminum wire has stopped in the center of the path. He stands with his back to Jakob, unmoving, as if he has stopped to consider something.
    â€œGo,” Walther whispers. Jakob drops down onto his stomach, lays his cheek against the cold earth. He crawls forward, pushes with his elbows along the sodden ground, the skin on his knees scraping with grazes that he won’t feel until much later, as behind him the trucks are circling in clouds of grit, the ground once again vibrating.
    Only the officer still stands in the market, turning now, his eyes searching, questioning, perhaps remembering. Jakob crawls to his cabbages, forages for his wooden box, moves on past the makeshift tables, the earth fungal scented and full of orange, a Cremona orange, that hides a miniature world of insects that know nothing of the world above them. He longs again to be an ant. For insignificance to save him.
    â€œThe best violins in the world, they come