Jacob's Way

Reisa Dimitri always slept soundly through the latter part of the night and on into the morning, but a sudden loud thumping noise very close to her head brought her awake instantly. Confused and frightened, she sat up in her narrow bed and stared wildly around the room, trying to pull her thoughts together. She knew that it was morning, for a pale milky light filtered through the single window of the room. As the biting cold struck her, she shivered, pulling the covers up to her neck, afraid to lie down again. It could be robbers! The thought brought her completely awake, and she swung her feet over the bed, slipping them into the bulky leather boots that she kept beside her cot. Standing up she listened hard, but only silence came echoing back to her. Drawing a deep sigh of relief, she murmured, "It's not robbers-and I don't think it's soldiers." The thought of soldiers was even more disturbing to Reisa. After all, robbers would only come in and take your possessions-but soldiers of the czar would seize people and carry them away to some frightful place where they would never be seen again. Such a thought always lurked deep down in Reisa's subconscious. She had heard terrible stories from her grandfather about the pogrom that he had survived in his youth. The Russian government had sent cruel cossacks through villages, killing Jews, slaughtering them like cattle, then taking the survivors away to prison camps where they died lingering deaths. Waiting silently in the room, Reisa became calmer. Not robbers and not soldiers. Soldiers would have broken the door down, and robbers would have tried to be silent. But I know I heard something. Standing up with a swift motion, she pulled a heavy overcoat over her thick woolen gown, buttoning the two buttons with numbed fingers. She plucked a white scarf from a peg, then moved quickly across the small room as silently as possible. She was alone, her grandfather spending a rare night away from home sitting up with an old friend whose wife was dying. Somehow the isolation had not troubled Reisa while it was light, but now the mysterious thumping sound worried her. Unbolting the latch, she stepped outside. The cold pierced her to the bone, for though there had been no fire in the house, it had retained some heat. Outside, however, the frigid atmosphere touched her face with ghostly fingers cold as death. Blinking her eyes against the fine particles of frozen mist, Reisa scanned the area outside the house, but saw nothing. Then remembering that the sound had been close to her head, she walked around the corner. There on the ground lay a bundle of some sort. As Reisa approached, she realized that it was the body of a large goose. Drawing her breath in, she ran at once and knelt beside it. The bird had been injured somehow. Strong compassion swept through Reisa. She loved animals almost fiercely, and indeed her grandfather, Jacob, had scolded her for bringing home crippled animals and birds half-mangled to death by cats. Yet she knew that this side of her character pleased her grandfather. She leaned closer and rolled the goose over. Seeing an empty eye socket and the breast terribly scarred and denuded of all except the finest feathers, she cried out, "Poor bird! You were left behind, weren't you? Some hunter shot you, and you couldn't leave with the rest of the flock. How terrible to be left alone to face winter when your fellows were all flying away!" Her fingers touched the bird's injured wing, and she leaned forward to look more closely. The goose gave a convulsive lunge and uttered a hoarse sound. Reisa jerked her hand back, afraid of the large bird's beak. The goose gave a shudder and seemed to grow still. She knelt there undecided. What should she do with such a large bird? Often she had tended sparrows and other small birds, keeping them until they were able to fly. But what could she do with this battered creature? As she knelt there weighingMorris, Gilbert is the author of 'Jacob's Way' with ISBN 9780310226963 and ISBN 0310226961.