Once: Pages 9–17 Summary & Analysis

Felix’s parents don’t come that night. Felix tells himself they wouldn’t risk taking the road into the mountains in the dark; Father Ludwik claims to get help from God when he does it, and Felix’s parents “were never very religious.”

Felix worries his parents won’t recognize him when they come: when they left him at the orphanage, he was much shorter, “plump,” and without glasses. But he remembers his parents promised never to forget him when they left him. He tells himself that this meant they’d come back for him “once they’d fixed up their bookshop troubles.” Besides, they gave him a notebook with a yellow cover, which he can use to identify himself and in which he’s written wild stories about their adventures “discovering why their bookshop supplies suddenly went so unreliable.”

At daybreak, Felix hears a car approaching the orphanage. Assuming his parents have somehow acquired a car, Felix rushes to the window. To his great disappointment, he sees not his parents but “a bunch of men in suits with armbands” exit the car.

As Felix heads for the dormitory exit, wanting to ask Mother Minka when his parents will come, Dodie tells him Jankiel, a new boy at the orphanage, is hiding in the bathroom. Annoyed that Jankiel is skittish about “strangers,” Felix tells Dodie to tell Jankiel that the men are likely Catholic administrators coming to make sure all the children are orphans. Then Felix wonders whether Mother Minka will lie to the men, sticking to the story about Felix’s parents’ sad, agriculture-related deaths.

Dodie tells Felix that Jankiel is hiding from “the torture squad,” not the visitors, and indicates a group of boys entering the bathroom. Dodie says they should go rescue Jankiel. When he and Felix enter the bathroom, the bullies are shoving Jankiel’s head into a toilet. Felix quickly tells the bullies that a plow horse killed Jankiel’s parents—it had a heart attack, fell, and crushed them. As they died, they made Jankiel promise to pray for them daily at the hour of their death. The chapel bell strikes seven, and Felix adds that Jankiel’s parents died at seven. When one bully claims that this is “just one of [Felix’s] stories,” Dodie adds that he hears Mother Minka coming.

The bullies flee the bathroom. Jankiel asks whether “they” have left. When Dodie says one of the bullies will be smearing Jankiel’s bed with mud, Jankiel says that he means the visitors. Felix says that Mother Minka will get the men to leave; he wonders whether Jankiel also has living parents, given how scared he looks. Jankiel thanks Felix for making up the story about the horse. When Felix says he hopes it didn’t upset Jankiel, Jankiel says it didn’t. “My parents froze to death,” he explains. While Felix processes this disturbing fact, Jankiel asks whether Felix often makes up stories; Felix admits he does, “sometimes.”

As Felix, Dodie, and Jankiel walk back to the dormitory, Felix wonders whether Jankiel is Jewish too, since both boys have “dark eyes.” He knows it’s no use asking, however, since Jankiel wouldn’t admit to being Jewish “here.”

Leaving Dodie and Jankiel, Felix goes to find Mother Minka. On his way, he looks out a window into the courtyard and sees Mother Minka gesticulating at the visitors. Then he sees smoke. At first, he wonders why the visitors are “having a bonfire.” Then he realizes that what the visitors are doing would make his parents cry: they’re burning books.