Anna and the Swallow Man Read online

  “No,” said the Swallow Man. “All I want is news.”

  The Peddler smiled his broad, empty smile. “News. News isn’t free. Make a deal with me and I’ll tell you what’s happening in the world. Though you may be sorry you asked.”

  They still had quite a bit of the tea that they’d collected during Barbarossa, having neither encountered many people since then, nor frequently allowed the risk of a fire to do something as foolish as heat water. The Peddler stuck his nose in one of the sachets, breathed in deeply, and then nodded.

  “What can I give you in return? You look as if you could use some food. A little cheese? Hard bread? I even have”—and here he pulled back the paper wrapping of a parcel of middling size—“meat.”

  Meat was tempting. They’d run through their stores long ago, and it was energy-rich stuff, filling and tasty. The paper of the Peddler’s package was open only a brief moment, but what was inside looked good to Anna—a leg of something, lean and red, still on the bone. There was even some pale hide on it. It must’ve been fresh.

  “What sort of meat is it?” asked Reb Hirschl, and with startling speed the Peddler snatched back the paper, his strong fingers working sharp and furious.

  “What the fuck do you care what kind of meat it is? You should be counting yourself lucky to get your teeth into some one last time before you’re killed, you fucking cow. Stop asking stupid questions.”

  For the first time the boiling cruelty that simmered low inside the Peddler had slipped up to the surface, and all three of them took silent note.

  The Swallow Man smoothed things over, forgoing the meat and instead selecting some dry bread and a small piece of old fruit. It was late afternoon when they all sat down together, and it was far from their custom to eat at such a time of day, but neither Reb Hirschl nor Anna was interested in questioning the Swallow Man’s decision.

  The Peddler did most of the talking, while quickly consuming the majority of the food that the Swallow Man laid out, including almost all of the bread they had just acquired from him.

  The news was unbelievably horrific. Anna could scarcely understand the things he was saying. By this time the ghetto liquidations were occurring and the camps were operating with increasing efficiency, and the Peddler told stories not only of what he’d seen, but of what he’d heard.

  At first Anna thought he was making it all up, afflicting them with the deranged imaginings of his sick mind, but she’d seen more than one mass grave, and when he spoke of it all, he seemed far too stoic to be inventing it for his own absent enjoyment.

  Reb Hirschl took the greatest interest in what was going on, which didn’t surprise Anna much. Aside from news of the war on international fronts, much of what the Peddler had to talk about concerned the Jews—the increasing stricture of the laws passed against them, the things that were done to them in the streets, and finally, what he’d heard and seen of the camps. Despite Reb Hirschl’s questions and comments as the primary conversation partner, though, the Peddler’s eyes rarely rested on the Jew. Instead his gaze lingered mostly on the hem of Anna’s too-short, outgrown dress. But in moments when he thought he could steal a glance without its being noticed, Anna saw him flick his eyes up and down, back and forth across the Swallow Man’s face.

  By the time the sun began to set, the Peddler had exhausted his store of news and was leaning back against a tree trunk, idly chewing on some cheese that he’d made no offer of sharing. The conversation had run out of fuel several minutes before, and it seemed clear that soon either he or the three companions would have to leave and go find another camp if they didn’t wish to spend the night together. The Swallow Man was stirring, perhaps to make his excuses and set them on their way, when the Peddler spoke again.

  “No, no,” he finally said to the Swallow Man. “I know you.”

  This fear had been growing in Anna’s stomach all day. She still very much remembered what the Swallow Man had told her on their first day together—what it meant to be found.

  “No,” said the Swallow Man, not looking at the Peddler. “I don’t think you do.”

  “But your name isn’t Hirschl. Is it.”

  The Swallow Man shrugged and turned his head to Reb Hirschl. “Is my name not Hirschl?”

  Reb Hirschl didn’t answer.

  The Peddler sat forward from his tree trunk. “You’re a very peculiar-looking fellow. Your face is very distinctive. Have you ever been to Łódź? Or maybe to Berlin?”

  “Łódź?” said the Swallow Man. “Once or twice. Perhaps you saw me there when I visited.”

  The Peddler was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “Yes. Perhaps.”

  After another long moment he pushed himself to his feet and began pulling his pack up onto his shoulders. “I may have been mistaken. No matter.”

  But his voice was not as malleable as the Swallow Man’s, and it did not sound like no matter.

  When all his straps were in place, all his buckles buckled and his boots laced tight, he turned away to face the gathering dark out in the trees. “Well,” he said. “I’m off.”

  But he did not leave.

  It was another few moments before he finally said it. “What if I were to take your little girl here for a short walk with me? Just for the pleasure of her company, you understand. You know my inventory—you might choose what you like. Or, even better, Mr. Hirschl—I have all sorts of money. What do you think?”

  “Thank you,” said the Swallow Man, as placid as ever. “No.”

  Anna knew perfectly well that the Swallow Man would never send her out into the trees with a stranger, but she couldn’t help but eye the weaponry that the Peddler had on display. Firearms aside, the blade of his bayonet was almost three times the length of the Swallow Man’s hidden pocketknife.

  “Are you sure?” said the Peddler. “It’s been so long since I had any company.”

  Anna could not for the life of her understand this. Had they not just sat together and talked with him for three hours?

  “And you know,” said the Peddler. “Young trees give such sweet fruit. The first fruits are the very sweetest of them all.” Then he laughed, high and shrill and startling. “Don’t you Jews have some sort of festival? A holiday for the first fruits?”

  Reb Hirschl spit on the ground and muttered in Hebrew.

  The Swallow Man remained calm. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that there is simply no way.”

  “Ah, well,” said the Peddler with small regret, and he turned to go.

  Over his shoulder they heard him yell through the trees as he went: “Be careful now, greedy! Too much of that sweet fruit and you’ll get sick!”

  —

  They (or, more accurately, the Peddler) had already eaten through the allotment made for their evening meal, and with nothing left for them to do, they settled in to rest.

  Anna could immediately tell that both of her companions were ill at ease. Reb Hirschl paced slowly and muttered, and there was a faraway look in the Swallow Man’s eyes as he sat sharpening the blade of his pocketknife.

  Finally Reb Hirschl spoke up.

  “Shouldn’t we go? Find somewhere else to be for the night?”

  The Swallow Man frowned. “No.”

  “But he knows where we are. She’ll be frightened all night if—”

  Anna was already frightened.

  “Hirschl,” said the Swallow Man, rising abruptly, as if a decision had been made. “I’m going to take a walk. Will you do me a favor and stay with her?”

  Reb Hirschl looked like he was going to object.

  “It’s all right,” said the Swallow Man. “Say your prayers. I’ll be back.”

  He left his bag and umbrella behind and walked off into the trees.

  Reb Hirschl did not know what to say, so he busied himself with prayer, but even when he’d finished, Anna hadn’t been able to find sleep, despite her best efforts. Her belly was painfully empty, and she was anxious.

  Of course that night of all nights,
the forest was quiet and still. If she wasn’t to sleep, Anna longed for some small sound out of the darkness that she might be able to interpret in favor of safety and assurance.

  But it did not come.

  A great time passed and the Swallow Man did not return.

  Reb Hirschl didn’t know what to say to her. It was all right that he didn’t know. Anna didn’t know what to do, either, but quietly she kept wishing Reb Hirschl would sing.

  He didn’t.

  Anna was dozing when the Swallow Man’s light footsteps finally approached from the woods, growing softly up into audibility.

  She kept her eyes closed and tried in earnest to take her sleep back. Perhaps she did not want to know what had happened. Perhaps she already knew.

  The Swallow Man did not speak when he returned. The first words were spoken by Reb Hirschl. “Where did you get this?”

  Here Anna cracked her eyes open and saw the Swallow Man carefully adding cans of food to Reb Hirschl’s pack. In his hands the Jew held a bottle of vodka.

  For a moment the Swallow Man remained silent, and then he said, “There was no point in leaving it.”

  Reb Hirschl dropped the bottle onto the ground, where it landed with a heavy thunk. “No,” he said quietly to himself. “No, no, no, no.”

  “It was swift,” said the Swallow Man. “I waited until he slept. There was very little pain. He barely knew.”

  “And this makes it right?”

  The Swallow Man sighed. “Hirschl, you heard what he said. He could’ve come back for her at any time. And his weapons were stronger than mine.”

  “So we get up and we walk her away from here! We don’t…we don’t…”

  The Swallow Man frowned to himself and hefted an unmarked can. Despite Reb Hirschl’s agitation, still he spoke softly, thoughtfully. “No,” he said. “No, a man like that hunts. If he wants a thing, he finds it. Running, hiding—that’s too little, too late.”

  “And what…what if he’d given up the thought of her? Then what have you done?”

  “There were other considerations.”

  “What other considerations? That you didn’t like him? He was a hard man, yes, a bad man, of course—I can’t even imagine the kind of things he must’ve done to lay his hands on a leg of meat like that, but—”

  “That wasn’t a leg,” said the Swallow Man, not looking up from his business. “It was an arm.”

  Reb Hirschl sputtered, laid his fingers to his lips, and turned his head away. After a long moment he began to shake his head. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t care. Even if that’s true, we’ve run up across far too many men as bad as or worse than he for it to make a difference. The only reason you killed this one and not any of the others is that he knew you. You were scared.”

  The Swallow Man stopped packing away what he had brought back and turned to Reb Hirschl.

  “It’s true,” said Reb Hirschl. “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s not a question,” said the Swallow Man slowly, carefully, “of how bad he was, Hirschl. He was dangerous. What makes you think that a man like that would even hesitate a moment to say where I am if he thought it would benefit him?”

  “What?” Reb Hirschl was genuinely shocked. “I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care who knows it! This thinking, this…You’ve become one of them! You’re a spiller of blood, a…a taker of life! And why? To keep your name hidden?”

  “Suffice it to say, Hirschl,” said the Swallow Man, “there are things about me that you don’t know. It is imperative that they not find me, because if they do, they will take me, and if they have me, the entire world will become a taker of life, as you put it.

  “Listen to me very carefully, Hirschl: The world itself. The sky will burn.

  “Are you so narcissistic that you think the simple slaughter of one man of such low quality as he is an unreasonable price to pay for the prevention of that possibility?”

  Reb Hirschl could not stop shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, whoever you are. What I know is that life is what matters. Life is the only important thing. The world is filled now with men who have decided that they know who should die and who should live for the Betterment of Everything, and I had thought that you were numbered amongst those of us who cared enough to protect the holiness that is just a single living, breathing person.”

  “I will not be an instrument of death,” said the Swallow Man, and this pronouncement seemed more final than any Anna had ever heard before. “That is why I keep my secret name safe. At any cost, Hirschl. Any.”

  “To keep yourself from becoming an instrument of death, you kill?”

  “Yes,” said the Swallow Man. “Yes.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Each man is the steward of his own soul.”

  “Yes,” said Reb Hirschl, “yes, yes, yes, you are your own steward, and though it may sicken me to have walked beside an extinguisher of life, I have no authority over you to tell you what you may or may not do. That authority is God’s alone.”

  Reb Hirschl took a moment to calm himself, but when he began to speak again, though his voice was softer, the tension of it was just as great, and despite his effort, his volume grew and grew again in agitation.

  “I first came with you because you offered me sustenance when I had none of my own. You, whoever you are, you are an intelligent man, maybe even brilliant—surely you must know that I stayed with you only for fear of what might happen to that tender, kind, good-hearted girl who follows after you. I thought I was protecting her from the darkness out there in the world, but maybe the danger was walking beside me the whole time.

  “How can you dare to justify yourself this way when her name is written beneath yours in the Book of Life and Death? The name that you stole away from her? How can you possibly teach her to take her sustenance from the bodies of the dead when you turn and make more corpses with your own hand? Certainly, whoever you are: kill to your heart’s content if you are only your own man. Lord knows how many others there are like you, so go ahead, do it, be one more. But if you would dare to make this girl, this girl whom you so delight in instructing, who breathes only when she has seen how you do it first, if you would make her like you are, then you are worse than a killer, you are a maker of killers, and I will keep her from you at any cost.”

  At this the Swallow Man stood up swiftly to his full, towering height. Despite Anna’s growth, the Swallow Man continued to loom over her, and now he stood far above Reb Hirschl, too. The Jew seemed so youthful and flush to her, and the willowy Swallow Man so ancient and weary, but when he spoke, the Swallow Man spoke with iron authority.

  “Hirschl,” he said. “If you try to take the girl from me, I will kill you.”

  It was true. He did not raise his voice—he so rarely did, and never in anger—but there was something in the measured tone of this simple sentence that felt incontrovertibly truthful, more reliable than anything he had ever said to Anna before in any language.

  Reb Hirschl cast about for some way to respond to this, and his eyes caught on Anna’s. She was curled up on the ground in a sleeping posture, but her eyes were wide open, and by this point she made no attempt to hide the fact that she was watching the two men fight.

  First he saw her, and then he recognized that she had been following their entire conversation. His jaw tightened, and he looked to the Swallow Man and then back to Anna.

  There was a question in his eyes. An expectation.

  Perhaps she was caught off guard and did not really understand that Reb Hirschl wanted her to speak in his support.

  Perhaps he was overestimating her precociousness, and it simply wasn’t in her to enter with impunity into such an argument of conflicting morals.

  Perhaps there was a fear in her that if she allied herself with Reb Hirschl, she would take upon herself the Swallow Man’s threat.

  Perhaps she was frightened and could not find the words to say in time.

  Or perhaps, very simply, she was the Swall
ow Man’s daughter.

  Anna did not speak.

  Reb Hirschl made a little joyless chuckle in his throat, and turning away, he walked out into the dark forest.

  The Swallow Man sat down hard and sighed. He lifted the new bottle of vodka to his lips.

  It was nearly a week later that they found Reb Hirschl’s body.

  —

  It is not good to stay living amidst death.

  This is true of the deaths that drop bodies in rooms and streets and forests, but also of the deaths that linger behind our ears and gum up at the corners of our eyelids, like settled dust on our clothing, or even like dirt beneath our fingernails—the deaths that we carry along with us.

  It is not good to stay living amidst death.

  But attempting to think of that time—of those days in that place—without an understanding of horror is like trying to draw the spaces between fingers without an understanding of the fingers themselves.

  All the same, I will spare you the details of what happened to Reb Hirschl.

  When Anna and the Swallow Man came upon his body hanging from a tree, they cut it down, and sat him up, his back against the trunk.

  Anna did not speak.

  The Swallow Man, too, was silent. It cannot have helped that what they’d used in place of a noose was the fine leather shoulder strap that he had found for Reb Hirschl and his clarinet.

  The clarinet itself was nowhere to be seen.

  There seemed to be no words worthy of speech, there and then, in any of the myriad languages between Anna and the Swallow Man. A word is a tiny moment of time devoted to the conjuring aloud of some small corner of what is—“apple,” say, or “running”; even “fully” or “mystery.” But there was no significance to anything that was, in that moment, only what was not.

  And so they stood in front of Reb Hirschl’s body in silence. Anna cried. The Swallow Man did not embrace her.

  She wished there were something that she might do for Reb Hirschl, some final favor that she might give, as if to button up his coat and brush off his shoulders before he went on his way, and this was all the more important to her because she had so horribly failed to give him what he’d wanted, what he’d needed, the night that he departed from their company.