Free Jakob’s Colors by Lindsay Hawdon Page A

a part of it. He knows what key birds are singing in, knows the chink of a crunching pebble, the smack of a lake wave, even what pitch the wind is making as it blows through the sails of a boat. He is one in ten thousand, the manuals tell him—he and his perfect pitch.
    But when he plays he forgets all of this. All that exists is the rise and fall of his heels and the intake of a breath. When he touches the notes upon the wooden floor, he hears the sound of Brahms, Rachmaninov, Horowitz, and Gilels. Sounding out into a tiny space that hardly holds him.
    In the morning nothing is said of the night before. Loslow is talking about cheese. Cherub is talking about names.
    â€œMy real name is Sergei,” he tells Jakob. “But no one has ever called me by that name and I have never liked it. You should like your name. It is who you are, what you stand for in the world. Jakob is a good name?”
    â€œIt is my da’s name,” Jakob replies.
    â€œSo there you go, then.”
    In the darkness Jakob nods, the tip of his fifth finger on Cherub’s thumb. He does not tell him then that he owns two names. Of the secret name that was whispered, only once, into his ear as he screamed himself into the world, to confuse the demons in their vengeful hours. But for then, this name has not been uttered since.
    â€œHow is it that Markus found you, Cherub?” he asks eventually.
    â€œIt was I who found him. He is the uncle of a friend of my father’s. I was at the library when they took my family. When I got home, only my father’s friend was there to greet me. He gave me Markus’s address along with a bag of bread and sausages. And I left my home and did not look behind me because I wanted to believe it was not the last time I would see it.”
    â€œI will wish for that, too, wish for it not to be the last time.”
    â€œThank you, Jakob.”
    Occasionally there is the sound of a not so distant train clacking over the tracks. The rattle of it rings in Jakob’s ears, bleakly familiar. Tuchun tuchun tuchun. Metal on metal. A hot spark and the cradle-rock back-and-forth motion.
    â€œA goods train,” Loslow will say. “Simply a goods train.”
    But Jakob does not hear him. Already he is back inside the cattle cart, cramped against the metal walls. He feels his brother’s heel in his ribs, bare toes in the crease behind his knees. He smells the grease of his sister’s hair next to his own, feels her hot breath on his cheeks. The sweat crusts on their bodies. The stale stench of urine seeps into their skin. Nothing to do but sleep and fear. When it rains, the air smells of mushrooms. When it doesn’t, it smells of blood.
    â€œYou,” the guard is calling from the open door on the other side of the carriage. “Gypsy scum. Habt ihr verstanden ? I said sit down.” He is talking to the man who stands, staring at the sky, at the Y-shaped treethat breaks the flat of the horizon, his face luminous with nostalgia. “SIT DOWN. Sich setzen. Sich setzen ,” the guard yells.
    â€œJakob,” Loslow is calling. “It is just a goods train, just a goods train.”
    But Jakob sees the tree, sees the crowd of children rounded up beneath it, who sit upon damp earth, dirt smeared and sucking their fingers, choking on their own tears. He sees the sun, white on the horizon, the shadow of a Y cast over the green grass. The man and the almost-smile that crosses his lips.
    â€œJakob,” Loslow calls, bringing him back to the cupboard darkness. “A goods train, simply a goods train.”
    â€œYou can squeeze that cochineal beetle between your fingers,” Jakob hears his father’s voice telling him. “You can pop it dead, so that its blood staining your palms. The reddest dye in the world, this blood. The treasure of the Aztecs and the Incas.”
    Jakob runs his fingers over the walls of his cupboard. Holds sawdust in his hands. Presses it to