I Am Forbidden Read Free Page A

forehead to gauge whether he had grown his Jew horns, she might wonder whether he was, in fact, stealing what she was giving him.
    Summer, a fence was erected behind the shrine, along the tracks skirting the horse meadow. On this side of the fence was Romania; on the other side was Hungary. On this side ofthe fence, men started to wear the armband of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, the Iron Guard.
    Winter, Anghel learned to hitch the oxen to the plow. He learned that he liked to lead them to the field, to feel their warm hides, that they talked in hollow moans. But he never shared his midday meal with the field hands. Instead, he went to his hideout in the bluff where he sat and watched the leaves falling together, and landing apart.
    *
    T HEN IT WAS spring again and maybe they were butterflies, the white flickerings along the sealed boxcars, maybe they were not fingers begging for water, and his name was Anghel whose father died in Odessa, whose mother was Florina who pressed her medallion every morning to his forehead and coached: “You will not be first in class. If you understand, don’t show it. Don’t answer the teacher’s questions.”
    *
    T HE DOGS barked before the rooster crowed. Anghel rose from bed and looked out the kitchen window. He saw three silhouettes emerge from the mist above the river. He hushed the dogs.
    After Florina left with the wheelbarrow and the rake, he set out for the shed in the meadow—where else would the fugitives have gone without alerting the neighbor’s hounds? He started and stopped on the sodden earth to forestall its sucking sounds. He crouched against the shed’s wall and placed an eye to a chink between two logs.
    A man, a woman, a little girl.
    The man was fastening a black cube to his forehead. His lips moved as he swayed back and forth. The woman was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She was tying a blue ribbon in the girl’s hair. The woman raised her head at the sound of an approaching train. The train slowed around the bend, hissed, gathered speed. The woman’s hands came to her face. The man whispered in a language Anghel had not known he still remembered. The woman sighed. The little girl fell asleep in the woman’s lap.
    Another train approached, slowed around the bend, stopped.
    The man and the woman exchanged a frightened glance.The man’s torso swayed more quickly, back and forth. His lips moved again.
    One hand pressing her lower back, the other flat against the wall, the woman hauled herself up. She was pregnant, very pregnant. She peeked out of the shed’s window. “It’s him, the Rebbe, quick!” The woman’s face beamed.
    The man’s brow lifted in bewilderment. He held on to the little girl as the door of the shed scraped open.
    The woman ran to the train, a train of boxcars with wide-open doors and people milling about inside.
    “Rebbe!” the woman called to a Jew who sat in one of the openings, reading a book.
    One shot. The woman’s hand came to her chest, to the spreading stain. She stumbled.
    The man rushed out of the shed, the black cube on his forehead.
    Horses neighing, hooves bucking, Hungarian guards toppling the fence, crossing the Nadăş River.
    The little girl stood in the shed’s doorway.
    Anghel’s hand came down on her mouth. Her muffled cry under his palm, “Mama!,” as he pulled her behind the shed, to the ground, as he told her not to move, that her mother wanted her to live.
    The train pulled away.
    After nightfall, Anghel and the little girl crossed the trampled fence.
    Peasants from nearby villages were dismantling marketstalls and loading the parts onto carts. One peasant told, over and over, how the militiamen had whipped the fleeing Jew, how the Jew had let out an astonishing cry. A bottle passed from hand to hand. There were belches and cheers, for the land that soon would be cleansed of Jews.
    In the market square, the girl’s father was tied to a post. His shoulders folded forward, his head