Milkweed: Chapters 18–26

Where there was a morsel of food on a shelf, there was someone standing in front of it, often with a club in his hand.

Resting on an upturned crate or school desk would be the shank of a horse or a side of dog or cat, a box of salt, a licorice stick, an onion, a potato or two.

“Bones! Bones! Crack the bones! Lots of marrow!”

The carcasses were laid out, blackened and crusty and minus their heads, and the vendors’ cries went out and the prices went up.

The charred, headless, tailless bodies laid out on the crates were not squirrels at all—they were rats—but the cry of the vendors never changed: “Squirrel! Squirrel!”

There was a large purple welt on the side of his neck. It looked like an eggplant.

I pulled the fish chunks from my pockets and put them on the table. Uncle Shepsel picked one up. He sniffed it. “Pickled herring.”

Uncle Shepsel devoured his piece at once.

Janina gaped at the door. It was bedlam on the other side.

Slumped against one wall was a large, stuffed cloth bag embroidered in black and green designs.

“Silence! Silence! You filthy swine!”

I heard Uncle Shepsel give a whimpering “Ohhh.”

I could hear her sniveling.

The next time a Jackboot came to her, he said, “You stinking sow! You smell like a pig farm!”

It was a horse, so skinny it seemed made of sticks and paper bags, clopping through the snow and slush of the street. It was led by two bedraggled men...

The Flop was short and scrawny. He had to look up at Big Henryk as he screamed at him.

That must have tickled the rest of us, for suddenly we were all dashing out of our shadows, passing the club around, bopping ourselves in the head just hard enough to be fun and send us lurching around the wobbling Flop.

When the Flop lost his balance and toppled to the ground, we got other notions. We pulled off his shoes and flung them into the street, and all the people on the other side suddenly had eyes and dove for the shoes.

Sometimes, over Uncle Shepsel’s objections, I slept at the Milgroms’.

We were all smugglers now, even Big Henryk. Smuggling was a nighttime thing.

Mr. Milgrom was lancing a boil on his wife’s leg.

Mr. Milgrom finished with the boil and pulled Mrs. Milgrom up to a sitting position, her back against the wall.

I careened from person to person.

On their Jackboot hats the great silver eagles spread their wings and seemed to glare at the people, daring them to do something wrong. Their wings were like angels’ wings, except the eagles’ wings were fully unfurled, flying.

His head looked as if it had been chiseled from stone.

There were always tiny flecks of mint on his lips. If you could see them, and if you could smell the mint, you knew you were too close.

He had my foot pinned to the ground with his boot (a scuffed, mud-caked, un-Jacklike boot).

And yet so great was the cry for milk for children that the cow seemed to materialize from the very hunger of the people, until one could almost see the animal loping down the street.

She liked to goad me into chasing her.

I knew that somewhere along the wall Big Henryk stood as tall as he could with Kuba on his shoulders, and Kuba was draping two thick coats across the barbed wire and hauling himself over and down to the other side, then tossing over the wall the rope that Big Henryk would winch him back with.

Sounds floated over: a clink, a tinkle, a voice, a wisp of music.

I swaggered down the sidewalk.

I resisted the temptation to put the blue-and-white band back on my arm.

Garbage cans as tall as me were lined up like soldiers. As usual, the lids were off, and several children were poking through the stench and maggots.

I avoided the cold locker of fresh meats, as we had no way to cook them, but shriveled clubs of sausage were perfect.