“You’ll be good today?” she said.
“Yes,” said Yehuda Leib flatly, his eyelids clamped shut, as if he still might manage to convince her that he was sleeping.
“You won’t make any trouble?”
“It’s never me who makes the trouble, Mama.”
Shulamis frowned, as if she just might believe this. “Of course not.” And then, crossing to the door, “There’s a little potato left in the pan,” and, halfway through the door, “Don’t forget your scarf.”
It was only moments later, the sound of Shulamis’s squelching feet fading down the muddy road, that the front door yawned open again to admit a bright-eyed boy into the morning.
A boy with no red scarf.
It was itchy. And it choked him.
Yehuda Leib couldn’t stand being constrained.
The sun was rising.
Few mothers in Tupik could see Yehuda Leib coming down the street without feeling the urge to protect their children from the ill influence that seemed to mass around the boy like a crowd of flies. And this was not entirely unjust. Yehuda Leib’s name was rarely heard in the synagogue or marketplace without an attendant sigh—always brawling, climbing, running—and if a quick glance over the shoulder showed that neither the boy nor his mother was near, the sigh was very likely to be followed up with the remark that of course, everyone knows what his father was like.
But if everyone knew that Yehuda Leib had a tendency to do what he wanted—often with some lightly destructive results—there were few, perhaps none, in Tupik who really understood the extent of his capabilities.
Little escaped the notice of his keen blue eyes.
This morning, for example, he was careful not to waste time lounging in bed once his mother made her way out into the world. Judging by the particular glimmer of the light, he could tell who was likely to be awake, who was on his way to morning prayer at the synagogue, who was making her way to the marketplace. Not only could he therefore say which kitchens and larders were likely to go unattended, but he could also guess which routes he might safely take to get into them without being seen—and, consequently, blamed once he’d acquired what he’d gone for.
Not that he was prone to lifting enough to be noticed—on either the taking or the receiving end, for his mother would never approve of his appropriations—but all the same his face and reputation were familiar enough in town that he knew it was best to avoid notice if he could.
Was it honest? No. But the more he was able to thicken their stores of milk and flour and salt, the easier his mother could sleep the next night.
And besides—as everyone knows—a boy cannot grow on half a potato a day. Not even an ordinary boy.
And Yehuda Leib was not ordinary.
This morning, Yehuda Leib managed a decent haul in the brief window of time safe for grazing, and by the time he climbed out of a certain second-floor window and turned his feet toward the synagogue, the pockets of his worn black coat were well laden with the scraps and leavings of a handful of houses: a hunk of cheese, a crust of bread, a half-eaten apple. Even his mittens were full: salt to replenish the dwindling supply in his mother’s cellar.
Perhaps he was a nuisance, perhaps a petty thief, but for all the mischief he made, no one in Tupik saw things as clearly as Yehuda Leib.
* * *
—
It was Yehuda Leib’s aim each day to position himself on the steps of the study hall opposite the synagogue’s front doors well before the morning service concluded. Once the worshippers began to mill about the threshold, the day’s schmoozing would start in earnest, and if he slung the brim of his cap low over his bright, keen eyes, huddling into the corner where the railing met the wall, their chat would flow freely: who had what errands to run, who was traveling, who sick in bed. This talk was indispensable to Yehuda Leib if he was to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention throughout the day, and if he was in his place on time, the talkers rarely took any notice of him.
This was why, today, it was so strange that they did.
Things started out normally enough, the droning hum of prayer within the synagogue dwindling and coming to an end. The doors were thrown open, and the most industrious of the worshippers squelched off to get their morning’s work under way, leaving the schmoozers to gather around Yankl, a lanky old schlepper who had gotten in late from Zubinsk the night before.
Zubinsk was the closest thing to a real place anywhere in the vicinity of Tupik. Nestled at the edge of the wide forest in which Tupik was located, it could be reached in the better part of a day’s travel, barring any complications on the road.
But as everyone knew, complications had a way of cropping up: wagon axles broke, donkeys sprained their ankles, men lost their way.
The grandmothers of Tupik had troves of tales hours deep about the malevolent demons of the forest: how they hid in the darkness between the overhanging boughs and dropped down upon your head when you stopped for a drink of water; how they tempted men off the path with the flicker of false fire and the aroma of roasting meat; how, if you were foolish enough to stop for a nap, they would sneak in through your ears and steal everything away—your thoughts, your memories, your very substance—until there was nothing left behind but the papery husk of you.
One could never be careful enough.
Men like Yankl, then, who made their living transporting goods between Tupik and Zubinsk, had a way of collecting charms and protections about them. Once, Yehuda Leib had heard Yankl cataloging his arsenal: the hunk of iron at the bottom of his heavy pack, the faded bracelet of thin red thread around his wrist, the amulets carefully inked onto small squares of parchment, rolled tight, and stashed in all the pockets of his clothing.
It was, in fact, about a new talisman that Yankl spoke as he came out of the synagogue door this morning: an old, hard slice of bread with a small bite taken out of one corner.
Someone asked how on earth he thought a piece of bread would keep away the demons, and at the sound of this word, Yankl spat superstitiously over his shoulder.
“This is no ordinary slice of bread,” he said, raising a finger instructively. “This is bread from which the holy Rebbe of Zubinsk has eaten.”
This pronouncement was met with a chorus of appreciation. If the stories of the demons were numberless and dark, the stories of the Rebbe were just as numerous and just as bright—his wisdom, his wonders: they said he could see straight into you and pluck out the sorrow like a rotting apple.
A voice spoke from the knot of gossips. “And how are the wedding preparations going, Yankl?”
“The whole town is in an uproar,” said the schlepper. “It’s as if they’ve declared a new holiday!”