Read Two Rings for Free Online

long I stayed there, or what I may have said to my father. It’s all a blankness to me, a darkness I can’t penetrate. I have no idea now how I returned home.
    What stays with me is my fear, rising up with the sting of bile in my gut as I walked along. Mama, who had cradled me in her arms every night of my life, had sent me out to walk alone, exposed on country lanes. Mama had sent me into danger.
    At times in the night, somewhere deep down, I still feel the fear of that thirteen-year-old girl, a vague foreboding about what comes next. That feeling has nestled inside me; it can lie dormant for long stretches of time, but it has never gone away.

    The Germans never came looking for my father, as far as I know. They did come for my uncle, though. It was the next year, and they went rampaging through the ghetto, banging on people’s doors, arresting those with socialist affiliations.
The Germans had already conducted oblavas for other groups. The intelligentsia, the doctors, and the butchers and water carriers, too, maybe because, either through education or brute strength, these men could be trouble if they organized resistance groups. But on this day, the Germans came looking for the leftists, and the soldiers came into our building looking particularly for my uncle, my Feter, Yisroel Glatt.
    â€œGlatt! Where is Yisroel Glatt?” they screamed, angry already.
    They had lists of names. I suppose their informers had told them things—who belonged to which organization, who perhaps was trying to stash what where. They burst into our building, clutching their lists, pounding through the hallways with their heavy boots, calling out the names of those they were looking for.
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    Feter, center, and friends

    They banged on our door.
    â€œGlatt. We’re here for Yisroel Glatt.”
    I knew what they could do. I knew what these soldiers were capable of. Even on a whim, even just for fun.
    Some time before, early on in the war, perhaps in September or October 1939, the soldiers had come for Majer Berger, a Torah scribe who lived in our building. He was a quiet man with gentle eyes that creased at the corners when he smiled at me and a light red beard stained murky yellow in places—from cigarettes, I suppose, though I never saw him smoke. He had four small boys; I guess he was in his forties, but I was just twelve at the time, and he seemed ancient to me, the very essence of a religious man. I’m sure he was pious; I probably thought he was close to sacred.
    When the Germans came for him, he offered no resistance. I didn’t even know until late in the day that he had been taken. When he returned later in the evening, I saw him in the hallway. He walked slowly, pressing his hand against the wall for support. A good part of his beard was gone and his face was smeared with blood. Mama pulled me into the apartment, wanting to shield me from such sights. The next day, I learned the story from others in the building: The Germans had taken Mr. Berger and two other bearded Jews down to the Jewish high school at 27 Å»eromskiego Street. They lined up the men by a tree and then, one by one, grabbed bits of their beards and yanked the hairs out from their bleeding chins. Just like that, the soldiers pulled out the beards of these harmless men. Then the men were made to climb the tree and balance
themselves on the branches. The soldiers ordered them to yell out “cuckoo” to each other, obedient show-birds put on display. The Germans were suitably entertained, gawking at the men, laughing and joking as Mr. Berger and the two others tried not to fall. After a time, the men were permitted to come down from the tree and return to their homes.
    How is a young girl to understand the meaning of an event like this? A child understands schoolyard meanness, classroom mischief. Jack once told me that when he was a boy and was made to study with some very old and, he said, very smelly rabbi who had a tendency