Mara's Stories by Gary D. Schmidt

Author:Gary D. Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2011-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Wonder

Chaim had been in the camp for less than three days before he woke one morning to realize that he could no longer believe in God. And who could blame him? Could you or I? Could God Himself blame him?

Chaim felt empty, and fought to stay that way. He was afraid of what might fill him. The putrid smell of the gas that hovered over the camp like the fog of a swamp. The buzzing, the unbearable buzzing of the flies that moved in clouds among the pits behind the barracks. The shots, all through the day, all through the night. The beatings. He could close his eyes, but he would still hear the thud of a truncheon on bone, or the snap of a whip across a face.

Or what was even worse, he might be filled with the last sight of his father and his mouthed words to him: “Go with God.”

Chaim roused himself in the darkness. The world was dark, and darkness was all there was. But still, it was his job this morning to carry the soup for the barracks, and it was time. He hoped that he could haul it back without spilling. If he spilled, there would be nothing for him but a beating from a kapo. He walked outside in the freezing cold and stood there with other boys and with old men, and when his turn came to take the vat, he put out his hands and saw that the man who would help him carry the soup back to the barracks was his own Rabbi.

“Chaim,” the Rabbi said, but Chaim could not look at his Rabbi’s face.

Together they hefted the vat and lugged it out the door and into the cold. The thin steam of it curled up around them, and they struggled and slipped in the mud.

“Chaim,” whispered the Rabbi gently, “He is the All and Ever Present. He is here, even here in this place.”

The Rabbi knew. Somehow or other, he knew.

“My father,” said Chaim.

“Yes,” the Rabbi said, nodding. “We have all of us lost fathers.”

“Rabbi, I can no longer believe. God is hiding.”

A long moment. The Rabbi shifted the weight of the vat from one hand to the other. “The moment we know Him to be hiding, then He ceases to be hiding,” he replied.

“I have seen the world, Rabbi. I have seen the world, and I know that God cannot be here. And if He is not here with us in this place, then He is not anywhere.”

They were almost to the barracks now, where the ground was its muddiest. The vat was becoming impossibly heavy for Chaim, and even the Rabbi grunted with the effort of carrying it.

“So what would God have to do, young Chaim, for one such as you who has seen the world to believe again?”

“A wonder, Rabbi. God would have to make a wonder.”

At the door of the barracks the kapo waited, slapping the black truncheon into the palm of his hand. Chaim steadied the vat and placed his feet carefully in the mud.

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