The Cage

As Shmulek begins to tell the story of his time at the labor camp, he characterizes the work he did there as “slave labor” (55). Nonetheless, his hope that his family benefitted from his work does not waver. He describes his release from the camp as seemingly random. Upon returning to Lodz, Shmulek tells Riva and her brothers that he ran home in search of his family; now that he cannot find them, he tells them that the next day he will request to return to slave labor in hopes that he will be sent to the same camp to which the Nazis transported his mother and siblings.

As Shmulek speaks, Riva and her brothers remain silent, feeling both his “agony” and his “hope” (57). Eventually, Motele has to cut Shmulek off as he enumerates his regrets, in order to tell him that his family received a little extra food for a while, and that his mother missed him and was proud of him. But the brothers also inform him that departures from Lodz are frequent and random: “They make new lists every day. Who knows whose name will be next on the list. Who knows what tomorrow will bring” (57).

Motele, Moishele, and Laibele ask Shmulek to stay in their apartment, but Riva insists that he stay with their neighbor, Henry, because she is worried what others in the neighborhood would think. Shmulek, she explains, is twenty years old, while she is sixteen years old; Riva’s narration also describes him as handsome, “like a movie star,” suggesting an element of attraction (58). She explains Henry’s complicated family situation: originally one of eight squatters in the Gruber’s apartment, he now lives alone, after his parents and the young couples who lived with them were taken, moved away, or died. In a letter to her mother that night, Riva wonders if she has hurt Shmulek by asking him to live with a stranger in order to uphold “moral codes” of their community to which many in Lodz no longer adhere (59). As the chapter ends, she places the letter in a drawer “with all the other letters never to be mailed” (59).

In Chapter 13, Shmulek’s arrival appears to put the family in danger. Just the day after he arrives at Riva’s apartment building, the siblings hear a loud knocking at the door that fills them with terror. They open the door to the Jewish police, who frantically search the apartment and aggressively ask each sibling where Shmulek is. Motele tells them that Shmulek left a year ago for the labor camp and that no one has seen him since. Though Riva feels guilty about lying to the police, she remembers her mother’s advice to “always speak the truth. But if the truth will kill another human being, lie” (61).

Comforted by the knowledge that her lie is justified, for it will protect another person, her emotions turn to anger as she watches the police tear apart the apartment. She wonders: “why are they behaving like this? They, too, are Jews, in the same cage […] So why do they act as if they were the masters and we were the slaves?” (61) Riva shames the police, reminding them that they “will have to answer for [their] behavior” eventually (61). The reason for their frenzied search, it turns out, is simple: the commandant who ordered Shmulek and the other men to be freed was drunk when he made the decision; sober, he wants them to return, because “they may know too much” (62).

Soldiers linger near Laibele, who is frightened, and so Motele stands up once again to talk them down. The officers leave, but Motele senses that they stay behind the door and motions to his siblings to remain silent. After he loudly reaffirms that no one has seen Shmulek, the siblings “look at him with pride and admiration” (62). Though the siblings avoid leaving the apartment for hours, they worry that the police have found Henry’s apartment and taken Shmulek. Eventually, Motele picks up a bucket for water and heads out the door to the water pump, a path that takes him past Henry’s door.

While he is outside the apartment, Motele loudly issues a coded warning to Henry and Shmulek, as if in conversation with Riva, who responds. At Henry’s door, Motele spills water as an excuse to knock on his door and warn him to “be careful” because the hall “is a mess” (64). After Henry answers the knocking, Riva invites him over for coffee, where Henry explains, in a whisper, that he and Shmulek heard the previous evening’s confrontation. He tells the siblings that Shmulek was ready to “give himself up to protect” them, but that Henry prevented him, and is now working to find him a new place to stay (65). Riva tears up, recognizing that Henry is “risking his life for a stranger he met only last night” (65).

At the end of the chapter, Shmulek moves to Henry’s friend Mark’s house, where he lives safely for weeks, until the police stop searching for him. He eventually finds a job cleaning toilets: “he is the horse who pulls the wagon full of human excrement” (65).