Читать книгу An Afterlife - Frances Bartkowski - Страница 10

Arm in arm, or hand in hand, the two of them always found a way to come closer than before. It was late summer and they whispered to each other in the darkness. Before going home to their separate rooms in the camp and the sounds of neighbors, they took their time. Night and the thick old trees masked their shadows. And there stood the Mothertower. Like a castle missing everything but its turret, it stood tall–large old stones topped by a golden cone. It was dark, and inviting, like something out of a storybook. Whenever they walked here, the two of them felt like children in a fairytale setting off on an adventure, not running away like Hansel and Gretel from the witch and her oven. The night air was thick and soft. They found their bench, one of three in a semi-circle around a fountain. Here the river overflowed into a brook, and another and another. The sound of water was everywhere. And no one but them to hear it. There had been rain, the river was high, loud and close. Their voices were drowned out by the sound of the falls.

If their embrace was awkward who would mind? He took her onto his lap easily. She floated in his arms. They looked into each other’s eyes in the darkness and met their own wishes mirrored in the other. Kissing him, she went for his neck and collarbone, and he got lost in her hair. They were not children now. The summer night made all things possible and the ghost of the mother in the tower turned away at the sight of these two. The connection was quickly over and even they couldn’t believe what they had done. And no one to punish them. And no one but the two of them to remember this night.

Ruby stepped back, straightened her skirt, and held out her hand, taking Ilya up. Smiling to themselves, and almost shyly, to each other, they took their time through the quiet narrow streets back up the hill to their rooms in the almost never quiet alleys of the Kaserne, the DP camp. In this Bavarian city barely bigger than a village, where German army officers used to train, where an artist had built a medieval tower to honor his mother, now there were thousands of Jews. The next morning they were to see the doctor. Ilya for his lungs, and Ruby for her belly. You needed a clean bill of health to leave Germany, and everybody spent time getting one piece of paper or another signed, affidavits stamped. Everybody waited. They waited for letters from ancient relatives and distant cousins in places they could remember hearing their parents pronounce before the war: Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Milwaukee—names from long ago.

• • •

Ruby waited patiently for the tub to fill up with hot water, as hot as she could get it out of the faucet. She was also boiling a pot of water to add to the tub. A hot bath. Whenever possible, she would wait to take her bath in the late morning when the sun might be shining right into the room, so she could be warm in the water and a bit warm, too, on her back. She began to do her best to get the tight curls of her hair all wet and as clean as possible with this soap that was all you had for your face, and your dirty underwear, too. It wasn’t easy to find time to stay there a little bit longer, because more than a dozen of the women did their best to share what little they had of water and heat and privacy. Today was a good day! It seemed that nobody was hanging around, letting the next one know that they would be rushing to get in as soon as you got out. It wasn’t a place where they were especially nice to each other. Everybody had their mishegass or just their wishes that they insisted be respected when it came to getting naked, even though you couldn’t say that modesty was such a big deal for most. How they had lived not so long ago made modesty seem a relic, and they weren’t facing death any more, but it was still a world of too many of them in too little space. She hurried to get dry and back to the room she and Mala were sharing for now.

The pitiful piece of broken mirror reflected back to her that she was fit to be seen now with her hair pulled back tight, wearing her royal blue blouse and gray sweater. She’d rely on one of the long windows of the dining hall to show her if she was put together properly on her way to work.

It was Tuesday morning and Ruby was headed to the camp office. Those rooms were usually warmer than the rooms where they slept. It wasn’t more than a five-minute walk past the huge gray warehouse, now used to feed dozens of them in the evenings; there it was always colder inside than out. In some of the smaller buildings where they slept, conditions were better than before but crowded, dirty. Some women worked on burlap sacks to make long drapes to put over the windows that let in light, but also cold air. She was lucky. She could type. She knew Polish, Yiddish, German and had long ago learned just enough English to have this job. And every day she learned more. Working here, she got to know the one German doctor and two of the American army doctors who were working with the Verschleppte, the DP’s, as they were called, to get permission to leave Germany. Everybody waited to leave—for Palestine, Eretz Israel, Canada, or America. There were some who wanted to go to France, and some to Australia and New Zealand. But mostly it was Palestine and America. They could list their choices, and mostly they were assured their first choice, but who knew when? The ones who compromised and said they would go anywhere often left the soonest. Everyone argued endlessly about these destinations anytime the subject came up. Canada took you out of the fight. Getting to Palestine was the most chaotic—war there, paperwork shoddy and slow here. The British agencies were handling most of that. The Americans and Canadians worked more efficiently together. But saying you were bound for “Israel” showed your Jewish heart and the willingness to wait for permission and approval, and it could keep you waiting—for some it was already a couple of years now.

You could almost guess who would choose Palestine over America. The ones like Izzy, who found time in every day to study Torah with the few old men who were left, and a few young boys. Izzy knew America called for business, talk, selling and buying—it was all about making a living. In Palestine, Israel—whatever you chose to call it—you could find couples, families who had gotten there already. Their letters said they had a little shul. And there were those wild Zionists who were there from before the war, like Ruby’s Aunt Masha. The letters they sent made it sound like Paradise; they’d gone there to make it so. So proud they were, it made Ruby wonder. Her aunt’s letters made it sound like a good but hard life, and there was war there. That cast a long shadow that troubled these stories for Ruby.

Ruby looked at the photo that Aunt Masha had sent her and that she kept above her desk—a date palm orchard south of Jerusalem. It was like a poem, this photo. The shadows and light it caught told her she’d never been anywhere like this. The sunniest summer day in the country in Poland before the war was never so filled with light like this. The picture was taken in the shade, but what gave it light was the desert that she could imagine just beyond the frame. Her aunt Masha had left Poland for Palestine when Ruby and her twin sister, Pearl, were about ten years old. Ruby loved Masha, and remembering summers picking raspberries in the country with her was an image that had kept Ruby going in the work camps and death camps. No surprise that Masha would find her way to more sun and picking dates.

Ruby had a vague sense it was a man Masha loved who got her to go so far away from home. The stories Ruby’s mother and the aunts told about Masha were a mix of curiosity, envy, and scandal. A letter from Masha was always a special occasion. They would be read aloud a few times to different groups of family and friends. Ruby remembered that Masha’s letters told funny and alluring stories. The sound of the telephone brought Ruby back to work from her daydreaming.

It was a worker at the JOINT office in Munich on the line. The connection between them was not as good as some days; the crackling noises in her ears made Ruby a bit irritable.

“Could you speak a bit slower, please? I am hearing your voice but it’s sounding far away and fast.” Ruby tried to explain her side of the conversation, because she needed to write things down even as they spoke to each other. Between the language, the noise, and the need to get things right, Ruby was doing her best to make the conditions more favorable for understanding each other. Ruby thought she heard that lists were coming by mail to the Landsberg camp office of how many places were opening in different countries for the next month. This was the kind of news everybody waited for. And Ruby would get to spread some of the news later. In the meantime, she took notes, and did her best to keep up with the mix of German and English this American woman was speaking. In person Ruby did better understanding the Americans. On the telephone she had to pay very close attention to the sounds and the tone of voice to be sure she wasn’t missing anything important, and that wasn’t so easy when the connection was bad like it was this morning.

Ruby wanted the decision to go easy for her and Ilya. She’d be happy either way. With Aunt Masha in Palestine, or with Fanya and Jakob, their closest friends, in America. As long as she had Ilya, everything would be all right. Aunt Masha would be an anchor to the past, to the family, to Poland. But going to America would keep the four of them together like they were here, now. They all got along so well. And their lives were so much alike, and Jakob was a link to home, to Krakow. They didn’t have friends in common because he was a few years older than Ruby and Pearl, and a few years younger than her brother, Max. But they knew the same shops, the park, the schools and synagogues, and the train station. They reminisced sometimes about their childhood dreams of where they would go if they could take the train to anywhere. Jakob said he always imagined seeing Vienna, and Ruby, Paris.

It wasn’t yet dark. Church bells were ringing six o’clock. Ruby could smell bread baking as the walk to her room took her by the bakery just across from the entrance to the Kaserne. The other smell this first chilly evening was of wood heating somebody’s home. She was going home—but it was only to the barracks, where nobody felt at home, but they wanted better words for where they slept and sometimes ate and talked their hearts out. At those moments Ruby was the one who would remind a complainer how good they had it compared to before.

Not that she didn’t have her own list of griefs and grievances.

Later that night, Ruby and Fanya took up the tiresome problem of Ilya’s sister.

“That Sadie, she won’t let Ilya go. Here she is going off to Israel with Aaron and the baby, but still she does everything to make him feel like a bad brother,” Ruby lamented. She worked the dull knife as best she could through the dark bread. She was making tea for the two of them, and the good butter she had found would make the bread tastier. She kept at the slicing, till Fanya’s hand let her know she should stop; they had enough for now.

“Look, soon enough Sadie will be far away and you won’t have to be cleaning up after her. You and Ilya, you’ll have a chance to be left alone. You’ll see, he loves you more than anything, Ruby. With Sadie gone, he’ll calm down. She just gets him all mixed up.”

“I know, Fanya. You and I, we’re like sisters, but you don’t act like my mother. That’s what Sadie does. She makes Ilya feel such a miserable mess. Ilya says she’s been like that since the day they found each other alive.”

What Ruby couldn’t know was the story she had never quite pieced together. Ilya admitted that Sadie was stronger than he was when she found him. And both of them said it was she who found him. On that much they agreed. That and the fact that he looked like a bag of bones. It was pouring rain, and he was wearing a raincoat and boots. Sadie never failed to mention that they were too big for him, the boots. That he looked like a fisherman with no boat. For Sadie this was the shock of it all. Her big brother—not gone like the rest. But here was his shadow. That was what infuriated her so.

She wanted for them to be together, but how could she get around, with him in such bad shape? Then would always follow the part about Ilya’s stay in the hospital and their different versions again made for fireworks—the sound of fireworks, not the sight of beautiful stars exploding in the sky. How could she want him to stay with her, and insist they go to Palestine together, when all she did was get angry with him?

All Ruby knew was that every time Ilya saw Sadie he came home in need of a nurse, like a wounded child, or a beaten dog. Ruby was tired of it and she would be glad to see Sadie and Aaron off. In a few weeks they were scheduled to leave from Bremen with maybe 30 others from the camp. Papers were nearly in order and goodbye dinners, coffees, and teas were the usual for that group.

Because of Ruby’s job in the camp office she knew people’s comings and goings. And she had to hear their stories whether or not she wanted to. No matter the kind of story, she listened. That wasn’t her job but it was how she spent most of her time at work. Paperwork, mail, and telephone calls from the Americans in charge, but mostly listening. She couldn’t stop herself, or them. The ones who told a good story with jokes or the angry stories of injustices suffered, those filled her up. Listening to them felt like learning. Some were so upset they could barely speak, or else they couldn’t stop but made little sense–with them she tried to imagine she was deaf. But really she was memorizing them. At night Ilya listened to her. And she could make him laugh or sometimes cry with her productions of what she had seen and heard. At least once a week she reported on Mr. Grynwald. He was the one who would try to sweet talk Ruby, thinking she had some kind of power here in this office. It was a run down little room, with one window, a tiny desk, an uncomfortable chair. But to him, the very existence of a telephone on the desk made him think magic could happen. He wanted Ruby to help move him and his wife along to the top of some list so they could leave Germany sooner. He always had some story of bitterness about this German or that one, and when Ruby would close her ears to his moaning he would shift and turn his attention to pleasing her instead. What could he bring her from the workroom where he was learning how to sew men’s clothing on one of the new machines recently delivered by the GI’s? To this Ruby listened with excitement, and he knew sewing was one of her favorite things to do when she was at home. Could he bring her a special color thread? Some scraps of rayon–a new fabric they were getting to work on. Mr. Grynwald would try anything to lift Ruby’s spirits so she might help him.

• • •

Where Ruby learned the twists and turns of the rules and where you could go around the rules, to Ilya rules were rules–it made him a good DP camp policeman. He and about thirty others kept watch over the two gates to the Kaserne, guarded day and night. Ilya spent part of his days standing around, watching people come and go, or riding his bicycle and keeping his eyes and ears open.

Watch for what, he asked himself? These were mostly young people, glad to be alive. The most antisocial thing anybody might get up to was buying things on the black market–or bribing someone to get papers more quickly. The early days of marches and violent demonstrations against the British about opening up the quotas for Palestine were behind them, and so was the first Purim where the Jews carried effigies of Hitler as Haman through the streets of this town where he had once been a privileged prisoner. Ilya was outraged when he learned that just a short walk from the Kaserne was the prison where twenty years ago Hitler had ranted about how he would change the world, before the whole world knew his name, and he brought the world to ruin.

• • •

Ilya kept trying to remember to say Israel, not Palestine when he spoke to Sadie and Aaron. Ruby wanted to go there, too. Letters from her Aunt Masha, when they came, were a big deal. This aunt was some kind of character, leaving Poland for a kibbutz in 1934. Ruby thought she might find other relatives there, too. All the lists provided by the American and British armies didn’t persuade Ruby that everyone had been accounted for after this terrible time, this World War II, they were calling it.

Ilya found Sadie already sitting, waiting for him in the café corner of the dining hall. Already he could see her impatience, and he had done his best to get there at the time when the women working in the kitchen made coffee and tea. Maybe today there would be some fresh crackers, or even some stale cakes. The sounds of the kitchen echoed through the vast hall, a military building like all the places in the DP camp, but this one must have once held large equipment or vehicles. It had that smell of metal and oil when you first came inside. Now it was a social place where dozens and dozens would eat, pray, and celebrate anything they could imagine. Yes, cakes would help to sweeten what he knew was coming. He knew she wanted to talk about the big move she and Aaron would be making. He also knew she thought he should follow her there. He felt as if they were just learning to stand on their own two feet again. They were youngsters when they were separated—now here she was, married, and already a mother. They were already in a new country. How could Sadie pick up and go so far away again? He tried to be the big brother.

“You know I wish you and Aaron well. But Ruby and I, we can’t leave yet. We don’t have the papers from the doctors. You’ll write and tell us what you both, and your little Naftali, think about the place. Maybe you can meet Ruby’s Aunt Masha. Who knows? We’re young, and we all have to live, just keep living. But Sadie,” he sighed, and it was a while before he caught his breath, “but Sadie, my heart is breaking. We just found each other and now we’re going our separate ways so soon?”

Tearful, just letting them roll down her cheeks, Sadie wiped an eye.

“Ilya, you know I want for us all to stay together, in one place. But Aaron found a friend from home who wants to open a market and wants Aaron to come work for him, and maybe me, too. Together they want to see if we can start a business. And Israel needs markets. In America, where you and Ruby are going, there are hundreds of stores selling shoes, coats, food. In Israel, Aaron and I can make a living, for sure. He’s a baker, and I worked in the kitchen in the Lager. If we work hard, we’ll manage. And there are people who speak Polish and Yiddish. Having to speak German every day, it’s like spitting for me!”

“Sadie, you’ll be all right. Mama and Papa would be glad to see us both alive and well, and you married and a mother already. You and Aaron, we’ll miss you. And you know we want to see our children grow up and be cousins to each other. Maybe in Israel? Maybe in America? We’ll see Sadie. Our parents were never as happy together as you and Aaron are, and as me and my Ruby are. Our father was always running off to the city, or out of the country, on business, he said. Remember how excited we were when he would come home? He would bring us something special, usually sweets we didn’t get in Sosnowiecz, or even in Poland. You and I will stay in close touch. Letters, pictures. Maybe we can sometimes talk on the telephone. Ruby says people in America all have private telephones. She’s always full of stories about America from her GI’s she meets at work. I wish you and Ruby got along better. She has my heart.”

Later that Sunday, Ruby saw how downcast he looked, and she asked, tentatively, “What’s doing with Sadie and Aaron?”

“How could she do this to me? How can she leave me? Leave all the friends here in Germany, and go to Israel? How can they just pick up and go?”

He wasn’t really speaking to Ruby. No, he was pulling his fingers through his hair as if he could tamp down his own anguish by taking it out on some unruly body part that wouldn’t stay in line. Beating back his tears. He couldn’t stand it when Sadie or Ruby cried. His brow knitted, the dark clouds came, and Ruby knew it would be one of those days where she would just keep away, and keep quiet. She’d go to see Fanya and Jakob after dinner, and they would stay up late, talking about their broken hearts, their restless bodies and their dead parents again. To be able to calm Ilya down later, she needed to go where she could be sad and angry for a while—at him, and at how life had turned out so painful for them all.

• • •

Ruby was bringing her work to Gerte’s shop to show her what she had done with the beautiful red wool—fine dark blue stripes running through a red the color of wine. They were vertical, and would make Gerte look lovely and tall in this skirt. Ruby had had enough left over to make Gerte a vest, and that was going to be the surprise. She was hoping that it would fit. She had left the seams in long stitches that she could take out and do over again if the fit wasn’t right. She knew Gerte would love the matching vest, and together they would choose three perfect buttons. It was the new fashion among some of the women to wear vests—a kind of manly look, with very womanly blouses for some. Others, like Mala, would add a man’s tie with her blouse and vest. It made her look very serious. Gerte was the type who would add a flower to the vest or blouse just to be sure that it made a feminine effect.

This work with soft and warm and colorful fabric was something that fed Ruby’s soul. It was something she had learned to do back home, before the war, when she would watch her mother and aunt do embroidery on napkins, tablecloths, pillowcases, and it always made them seem so quiet and restful, even as they chattered away while sewing. She and Pearl would often sit with their mother and their Aunt Zusia and imitate them as they tried out the stitches they were taught. Now Ruby kept her sewing to the evening, and often for when she was alone, when work was done, and she could let her mind wander to those times before. When she and Pearl were a world to themselves.

Now she was the adult, and yet when she went into Gerte’s shop, especially today with the skirt finished and the vest nearly made, she felt like a girl again. She knew her handiwork would be judged, and fairly, and she awaited the look on Gerte’s face and the words she might say. If she was pleased, she might ask Ruby to make some more things, and she might even offer to sell them to some of the women in town who would love to have a new item of clothing, handmade. Gerte, and her friend Lotte, who sometimes helped out in the shop, had some beautiful fabrics that they’d been able to keep through the war, when no one was spending money on what they didn’t need and there were no men to admire their new clothes. She told Ruby that before the war they regularly took the train to shop for fabric in Munich, and sometimes they would even go to Belgium or France to find cloth. There the wool and cotton and linen were especially well made, and when you sewed with it you knew that the things you made would last a long time if you took proper care of them. Gerte’s was a small shop, but filled to the brim with bolts of fabric lined up like giant books on shelves and arranged by color and heaviness—wools for winter, cottons for spring or summer. That was part of the pleasure that first took Ruby into the shop one day—the sight of all that color just to look at and, when she overcame her hesitation, to touch.

She and Gerte had slowly overcome the predictable mutual suspicion between Germans and Jews and their own shyness. That first day her friend Lotte was in the shop too, so Gerte had someone in whose company she felt sure, and that was maybe what let her be especially curious about Ruby. And for Ruby, once she walked in, she was so enthralled by the sight of such luxury—and the possibility of such beautiful clothes—that she began to talk to both women with great enthusiasm, as strangers might have in any time and place, but not this one.

Here there were three kinds of people: the Germans, whose little town was now filled with American soldiers, and even more filled with Jews who had come there to revive and wait to leave for somewhere else.

Fanya wasn’t too thrilled by Ruby’s working for Gerte. She preferred to keep to those she felt knew her, and who were easier to talk with. But Ruby was more open to the world, always had been. Pearl, too, used to be shy when Ruby would readily talk to strangers or other girls and boys, on their way home from school. Ruby had a way about her that seemed to show that she trusted and could be trusted.

This world was one full of suspicions and strangers. But Ruby wasn’t going to let that keep her from taking a few risks. And besides, this sewing work was so soothing to her nerves. So different from the work in the camp office where she was dealing with paperwork and problems. With wool and cotton you got to make rough things smooth and give shapeless cloth a perfectly fitting form, once you cut the fabric and stitched the seams. It was a feeling of accomplishment different from anything else she was doing these days. So much was about waiting. About official permission. About decisions in your hands and then out of your hands.

“Grüss Gott,” said Gerte.

“Guten Morgen.”

Seeing Ruby had a rather large and seemingly delicate package in her arms, Gerte helped with the heavy door. The dust sparkled in the dark air of the shop where sun was coming through the front windows. Ruby’s entrance had stirred things up.

“So good to see you, Fraulein. What are you carrying?”

It was at least three weeks ago that the two of them had stood next to each other, with Ruby down on her knees measuring Gerte’s hem length to be sure she got it “not too long, not too short,” as Gerte had asked. They were both excited when Ruby laid the cloth in the bag down on the cutting table at the back of the shop. There the light was better and clearer. When Gerte saw the skirt, she picked it right up, handling it with care, trying out the back zipper, noticing how smooth the seams were. There, underneath the skirt, was the half-finished vest, and this produced a kind of smile Ruby had never seen on Gerte’s face. Both of them were a little bit embarrassed. Now came the moment of truth. Gerte had to go into the back room, a tiny space with a mirror, to try on the skirt and vest.

“Be careful of the vest, the seams are only partly done. I wanted to be sure it fits before finishing them properly.”

Gerte was impatient to try them on. Lotte wasn’t in the shop today, and she had to ask Ruby the favor of acting like the proprietor in case anyone should come by while she was changing clothes. These two women were finding ways to help each other, use each other. They both understood that trust was not complete but sufficient for this moment to pass without having to say more.

When Gerte came out of the back room dressed in Ruby’s handiwork, they both smiled broadly. The skirt fit perfectly over Gerte’s waist and hips, and the length was just the fashion of this time. Women were all showing more of their legs than ever before, especially young women like Ruby and Gerte. The vest was looking very promising. Now they had to come close to each other again, as Ruby inspected the armholes, the most delicate part of any vest. They had to be strongly sewn and fit perfectly around the shoulder to resist all the motion of the arms, and yet loose enough so that Gerte could wear a blouse or even a light sweater underneath.

“Das ist aber schön!” exclaimed Gerte. Yes, Ruby had to agree, it did look lovely on Gerte. She was glad to have pleased Gerte, and she herself was proud of the work.

Ruby wished Gerte a good day and headed to see Ilya, rehearsing in her mind all the details she would tell him about how things had gone so well in her effort to get to know one of the German women—someone so close in age and so far from her own experiences. Ilya loved the boldness that Ruby took with her everywhere.

• • •

A Bach partita it was. She’d know it anywhere. It came at her. Over her. Through the radio, somewhere, fingers ran across keys she remembered. Music she knew from her father’s practices. From her own halting, repeated efforts to make that music happen herself. Her own fingers couldn’t get anywhere near such complicated dances now. She rarely tried because when she managed to get some phrases right, it was all she could do to be pleased as tears streamed down her cheeks with all the loss. The losses. Her dear, sweet-smelling father. All mixed up with the salt of her drowning self—from her eyes all down to her tongue that tasted the present as she touched the past.

Now, out of tune, as usual.

She let them come, the tears. Whoever was playing this version was fast and amazing. She could hear that. Her mind interrupted her breaking heart and shattered soul.

Thank god the phone wasn’t ringing and no one was there to interrupt the filing she was doing when the piano broke into her.

Just concentrate on the alphabet and the calendar to make order of the chaos inside. That would tamp down the hurting and dry her out eventually. She let herself listen and let the thoughts float through her. There was no stopping them anyway. Or the memories they brought along. Her father. So proud. So smart. So loving. She couldn’t believe the moment that burned through the years—of him bargaining with the Gestapo. For what? Not his own life. What? Time? Another day in the ghetto? It wouldn’t work this time. It didn’t. His body bent in ways she’d never seen, as they shouted at her mother, her brother, and her and Pearl, dragging him away. That was not how she remembered him. She couldn’t forget it either. It was her last look. Their last time, reaching, unable to touch him, as doors slammed and shock silenced them, and fear for what else might yet come that night.

No, Bach at the piano, on the violin. Those were her memories—not to be let go. They were her survival, yes, when she wasn’t in the fog of misery of those years after, before. Her father, his music, his face in ecstasy when it all came out right, and how sweet he smelled of his cologne when he hugged her, kissed her and Pearl goodnight. She knew that smell her whole life. She must know it now! Could she find it? Describe it to some shopkeeper? She could find a bottle. She vaguely recalled the dark blue bottle with a purple flowered label up on a high shelf in the dressing room her parents shared. The world as it was. Nothing changing but the clothes she wore, the new friends at school, and the seasons.

• • •

It was a night in April, spring that still smelled like winter. Ruby put on her wool jacket and tied the pink silk scarf that Ilya had given her for her birthday and left the office for home—a kilometer away. Home. She would pass by the bakery and see what cakes and chocolates they had. Just looking in the bright glass cases after dark gave her a thrill. But these were not the streets of her Krakow neighborhood with its coffee shops lit by chandeliers, their polished wooden floors and tables. She could remember the looks of the women working there who were usually round and red-cheeked behind their lace and linen aprons.

As a child she thought this must be a wonderful kind of profession. When the grown-ups asked her and Pearl, her twin, what they wanted to be when they grew up she always said a bakery lady, and Pearl said a flower girl. In their family, with their father a lawyer, and Uncle Pinchas a rabbi, this never failed to get the girls a laugh. Not “Pearl and Ruby,” but the ‘girls’–that’s who they were–as if saying three words took too much time. “My girls,” she could hear her father’s voice calling them, waking them on a Saturday morning.

In the shop window, the dark chocolate with almond beckoned. Maybe after dinner she would tell Ilya all about it. And maybe he would cover her with kisses to make her forget the chocolates. And she would. Nothing was better than Ilya’s kisses. The cool night would end in their warmth. They were like two animals the way they got as close as possible to each other’s skin and curled up, as if he were a snail and she the shell.

Just the day before, Ruby had learned at the office that Motek, a man who knew her brother from before the war, was in a hospital in Munich. She and Ilya were taking the train to Munich tomorrow. They would visit Motek and maybe have lunch or dinner at a real restaurant. Not like the ones here where people came to drink beer and eat potatoes—but a real city restaurant. Surrounded by people speaking German, they would whisper, hold hands, and again feel glad to be there together. Ruby would wear her spring suit, a skirt of coral colored lightweight wool, with seams running down the front and back and the sides, swinging around her knees. The jacket had glistening buttons the size of 50 pfennig pieces, and under it she would wear her starched navy blue blouse. Ilya would look handsome in his special suit and tie.

Motek would get to meet the man she loved, even if her brother never would. The news about Motek wasn’t good. He had pneumonia and wasn’t recovering. He had made it through the Lager, but getting sick now wasn’t a good sign. Like her brother Max would have been, Motek was thirty-five. Most of the DP’s were in their twenties. The really hardy ones were in their fifties and a few really old timers had made it. She wondered if their visit to Motek might be the first time he would see someone from home.

• • •

The train ride through Kaufering into Munich was just long enough to lose track of time, and the view was mostly of fields and farmhouses. The simple pleasure of looking out the train window never failed to make her count her blessings. The slowing down and hissing of the cars approaching the station and the arrival—the train has windows, we are going to pay a visit, walk, eat, sit on a park bench. She chanted these things to herself, and the panic rolled back. She let herself remember and say a prayer as the train stopped. The doors weren’t yet open. That was what set the memory trap. But now she and Ilya were hand in hand waiting in the group at the doors.

Ilya always let others go first. He did it like a gentleman, but Ruby knew it was so he wouldn’t be overcome by his own memories of crowds, lines, noise. He just concentrated all his attention on Ruby’s hand in his own. He held it up to admire. It was small, a bit freckled on the back, pale, her fingers thin and beautifully shaped. They were side by side, standing close enough so he could catch the freshness of her hair washed that morning. He could see the top of her head as it rested leaning into his chest. He felt safe close to her. She’d take over when they got out of the station. He enjoyed watching her negotiate with merchants, strangers, the hospital officials. This city girl, she knew how to find her way around. They took the bus across town as instructed.

The busy German nurses and a few doctors paid them no attention as they walked to Motek’s room. Ruby entered the room with her arms wide open to greet him. His eyes were shining with surprise, and maybe some fever, she thought.

“My darling, Motek, how wonderful to see you! We came as soon as we heard news that you were ill. Motek, I want you to meet my sweetheart, and fiancé, Ilya.”

She turned to invite Ilya into the circle of the three of them at Motek’s bedside. Ilya smiled, but with restraint. This was a new person for him, but for her someone as close as she might get to her past. What would Motek think of her man? They shook hands. Ilya was a bit strong for the grasp of Motek’s soft and warm hand. They greeted each other in quick Polish words of politeness. Ruby was eager to make this visit as easy as possible for all of them. She gave Ilya a look of satisfaction, with a slight nod of her head. Ilya was ready to wait while Ruby visited and offered consolation and company. She and Motek would trade stories. He looked very weak. It was too familiar a sight to Ilya. Some days his own emaciated self still looked back at him from the mirror. He’d had his own health back for less than two years.

He didn’t want to interfere with their visit. He went to sit in the hall where there were chairs. He looked for someone to talk to, something to read. He paced a bit. He poked his head in the room and said he was going out for air and a cigarette.

The front stairs of the hospital faced a wide avenue. Buses, trams, some cars, and a parade of bicycles. Pedestrians waited patiently at the stop lights. The leisure to stand there and watch the world go by felt like a holiday. He could feel anonymous but not alone, knowing Ruby was just inside. And that they would leave together. He hoped her visit didn’t leave her feeling too sad. But even if it did, he knew how to help make the sadness pass. There was time for tea or coffee and a long walk and later, a dinner before the last train back to camp. He and Ruby were free to stay in the city as late as they wished. Free? What did they know about being free, the passersby? Those years he had been in hell, they had kept right on living. Oh, he knew there had been hardships, wartime shortages, and some had lost family, men, mostly to the war. But he could see they had never been as afraid as he was for days and years. That, he could see, was foreign to the Germans and the American soldiers he had come into contact with.

Ilya took pleasure in the scene, feeling a part of this ordinary day and released from the camp routines at the same time. These few trips into the city he and Ruby had taken for business always included time for some small extravagance. Like the day he had bought her a watch—an engagement gift, really. Not a ring, as he might have before the war, but still it was so much more than he hoped for during the dark time. This woman agreed to marry him. She loved him. She kept telling him so. In every language they shared—Yiddish, Polish, German. She even taught him to say the words in English. To practice, in case they went to America.

He was beginning to believe in their future together. It was hard for them all. And it was all they wanted. To be able to believe. Ilya would give up all the grief over the past if only he could really put faith in the future. Ruby was able to pray. But he couldn’t do it. He never had. He didn’t believe. Whenever the subject came up–and it did a lot—on Friday evenings whether you went to camp services or not—you couldn’t escape being a Jew. A believer in God, that was the part Ilya just couldn’t play. For Ilya religion was just bubbe meises, old wives’ tales. Words and stories that helped some people to sleep at night. Not him. When he and Ruby went to see the DP camp rabbi about getting married, he was honest about his skepticism. He had no argument with being a Jew, and he knew that when he and Ruby were blessed with children they would be Jews. She would probably insist on a religious education. Maybe his children would be more Jewish, and that was fine with him. What wasn’t fine and made him lose patience were the conversations about where God was when they were all in hell.

He saw nothing there to argue about. God was gone. For Ilya, maybe he was never there, but he didn’t say that to anyone. Sadie said their parents would be turning over in their graves to hear him say such things. He didn’t bother with the obvious just to hurt her more—their parents had no graves. A few times he said such things, and you’d think it made him the enemy. Nobody wanted to admit that you could maybe not believe, but still hope. That hope could be what you believed, and beyond that who knew what you would find? Ilya always hoped. The ones who lost hope? They looked like Motek in his hospital bed, fading away. Knowing their time was over, giving up. That he didn’t do.

The rabbi had commended him on his hope. He said he could see Ilya was a good man who would make a good husband and father. It was as close to a father’s blessing as he would get. The approval of friends meant much to him and to Ruby, too. He heard Ruby calling to him and, looking up, he saw her waving from the window of Motek’s second story hospital room. Hearing his name called aloud, such a simple thing, sent him into a near panic. No one in this city knew him. He took a deep breath and waved back at her. He smiled up into the pale April sun. Her sweet face was partly in shadow. Her voice, his name in her mouth—it took his breath away. She persuaded him this was love, not to be afraid. How did she know? How could she be sure? She seemed able to pick up her life and know what to do with it. Where did she learn that?

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he spoke up to her, mouthing the words deliberately. He wasn’t sure she would hear him.

Ilya turned his attention back to the anonymous people on the busy Munich street. He had this way with some strangers. He could see them like x-rays. That girl, maybe ten years old, walking by holding the hand of a boy. Her younger brother, probably. Ilya felt as if he could see her a young mother ten or twenty years from now, leading her son by the hand. And as easily, he saw her supported by the arm of grandson half a century from today. Ilya didn’t know whether it was a blessing or a curse, this seeing the younger and older ones who lived inside us all. He thought it came from watching those men his age disappear day by day before his eyes. Yes, this minute, they were all of them, the ones living on, full of life, healthy and full of hopes and wishes.

For two years at least, longer for many, they lived on the air. Oh yes, water, soup, bread, yes. But how they kept breathing—that was the key. Sighing was a way to breathe deeply. They all did lots of that. Of course, some tried to keep talking. But words ran out. Their energy was limited. To get to the next day you needed just to breathe. No matter how bad the smell of death all around, and mud and shit. No matter how cold the morning air. No matter how your lungs ached from the work of breathing.

Ilya put out his third cigarette and then he headed back inside the hospital. The sight of the nurses and doctors moving with purpose mirrored the people in the street. Everyone had a job to do. He and Ruby were visitors. He heard her laughing as he reached the door of Motek’s room—that was her job here—to laugh and to talk. For Motek it was the sound of life going on.

Motek was smiling—Ilya could see that it took some effort. But his eyes burned bright at the pleasure of Ruby’s visit. She was a girl from home. It was good to remember how they had been young together before the war. Ruby had told Ilya about Motek’s parents, who owned the most beautiful coffee house in their neighborhood of Kazimierz. Her family often came for hot chocolate and pastries on Sunday afternoons in winter. Sundays were for long walks to the edge of town and back. Coming back from these walks, she and her sister would beg to warm up at the café. They all knew each other from school, and their familiarity delighted Ruby and Pearl’s parents, who could see their daughters through the eyes of others when they went out in public. Today Motek had been reminiscing about his father and uncle who ran the shop. His words were labored, but he was visibly proud of how they had kept the wooden benches, chairs, and floors polished so they would reflect more light in the mirrors all around. When you entered it was a dream of opulence. Always a special occasion, even though Ruby’s family was well off enough to go regularly. Those days of pleasure and fancy were so far behind, but for Ruby and Motek to see each other brought back the feeling of ease—before life turned dark.

She could see he wasn’t going to make it.

“I promise to come visit again in a couple of weeks. Ilya and I will make it our business to come back.”

That feeling of home was as compelling to her as it was life-giving to Motek. The telegram that came ten days later would put out another light in her soul. More memories gone. Less and less remained of who she once was. More and more of her life was with Ilya and the friends in camp. The world had become so much more awful and smaller than she had dreamed when she was a girl. So many promises that were long ago broken. So many expectations: simple things like the fantasy of having her mother teach a grandchild to play the piano, as she had her own daughters. A joy she could never lose—that music she learned. Like reading a book, it came naturally. She’d have to teach her own child what she could remember—maybe that Chopin nocturne she used to work at from time to time when she felt really serious and really sad.

• • •

Today Fanya took the train into Munich with Ruby for Motek’s funeral. This hometown boy she had just met again. Two weeks ago, when she and Ilya went to visit him in the hospital, she knew there would be the gift of seeing him alive, and then the comfort and pleasure in food and drink afterwards. Today there would just be heartache. She and Fanya held hands and looked out the window lost in their own thoughts. When Ruby couldn’t bear the silence any longer, she squeezed Fanya’s hand gently to get her attention.

“I have to tell you a story I remember about him when he was young. Remember, I told you about his family’s coffee house and tea room, and how we would go there on weekends with my parents for hot chocolate in winter or ice cream in summer. One Sunday, he was working there with his parents and he was our waiter. It was comical to me and my sister because we knew him from school, where he was a very serious student. He treated us all, but especially me and my sister, as if we were his best and only customers. He made us special drinks with extra whipped cream and put chocolate candies on the plates. It was all very flattering. I remember our parents were amused to see what a show he put on for us girls. We must have been fifteen years old. I think he liked my sister quite a lot. And I remember her blushing at all the attention. But I had to keep from laughing because the whole time he fussed over us, making several trips to our table, he had powdered sugar in his hair. He must have had some on his hands in the kitchen and run his fingers through his hair. Maybe he sneezed. Or maybe someone in the kitchen played a joke on him. But he didn’t know it was there. It made him clownish, but it also looked like part of his hair had turned white. A boy pretending to be a man.”

Ruby paused and her voice broke.

“And here we are on the way to his funeral. He’s the age my brother would be, thirty-five.”

Ruby’s voice became small, and Fanya let go of her hand and put an arm around her shoulder.

“It’s all right,” she said. “This is a time to cry. Another boy who hardly got to be a man. Let’s not forget how lucky we are—your Ilya and my Jakob—they are becoming very grown men. Motek is a good soul. You’ll remember his story to tell your children when they want to know about your life. His life will be a part of your story. Think how remarkable it is a funeral, a funeral-for-one. We’ll help to bury all our lost souls a little bit today.”

Fanya never failed to know how Ruby was feeling. She was particularly in tune with Ruby’s sorrows. She didn’t talk much about her own. She was one of those who just said her prayers and insisted on being sober and serious. It was good she had Jakob for a husband, and Ruby for a best friend. Those two together, when they were in a mood to joke and laugh, even Fanya couldn’t resist. With Ruby, Fanya learned about what it might have been like to have a sister. She had lost three older brothers. And for Ruby, of course, Fanya was nearly like having Pearl, her twin, back, next to her, in her life, every day.

• • •

They knew they would have to take a taxi to the cemetery. Neither of them had been to a cemetery since before the war. A funeral seemed so ancient and forgotten a ritual. Like all the camp weddings and births, they made new things out of old barely remembered things. It felt good to be going to say prayers for his young soul.

Standing with a few others at the grave, Ruby whispered what she could recall of the Kaddish with Fanya and the others, doing all she could to subdue her tears. None of them was crying just for Motek’s sweet soul. He was their talisman for memories of lives left, unfinished. Ruby was flooded with the memory of the smiling faces of his parents at the coffee house, her own parents, her sister, Pearl, her big brother, Max. A whole way of life that the chanting of Kaddish let go and let live on.

There were a dozen mourners. A few Ruby recognized from the visit to the hospital, two nurses and the tall, handsome doctor, who were maybe praying in their own way. After the prayers, they were visibly at a loss. They were there together but didn’t know each other. Ruby made the first move. She put a hand on the arm of the silver-haired older man to her right, and with her eyes she beckoned to the two dark-haired women who were arm in arm by his side, and clearly a pair, like her and Fanya.

“Let’s go for a drink together,” she said, quietly, respectfully, but in a voice that could be heard by all if they were looking her way. Those just beyond hearing turned, and an older bearded man whispered to the woman at his side. The mood had now shifted to their effort to stay together in Motek’s embrace, and find out something about him together. Ruby was certainly curious to know who these strangers were. There was a kindness in their eyes, and it seemed to be a reflection of who Motek was. She wanted to know his friends. Yes, because she felt she’d learn not only about who he had become, but something about her own life. They might have been more than friends in that old life. It was hard to believe they had found each other after the war. Who else was in Motek’s life here and now? Maybe there was someone else from home, but she’d never recognize them. Maybe someone who knew her brother. Maybe friends of his parents. Maybe someone who used to play in the orchestra with her father.

The doctor knew the city and had a car. He could take half the group and come back in twenty minutes for the others. Now there was some activity. Who could best fit where? Three in front, maybe even four in the back seat. Then the five left would have the more comfortable ride. Should the women go first and the gentlemen wait their turn? Close quarters would insure the group got to know each other more quickly. Having been the one to issue the invitation, the doctor in a near bow, said to Ruby, “You should come in the first group and get the restaurant prepared for the rest—see to a table, you know, tell them we’d like a quiet corner.”

“A quiet corner where we can all talk at once,” Ruby kibbitzed. She and Fanya got in the car. The other two women who had come together got into the car, saying, “We’ll come along with you.” A show of gallantry began between the elderly couple and the other men who didn’t seem to know each other but who all were shy and curious to get in a car with four women.

“Come on, we won’t bite,” said Ruby, smiling, and a bit louder than anyone had yet dared. The silliness of their hesitation now there for all to see, one of the men stepped forward as Fanya and her seatmates squeezed a little closer.

“I’m Philip Levi,” he said, offering his hand. Handshakes all around, and they were off. The ones left behind began the first round of finding out who was there, and where they were from even before the car rolled away. Inside the women in the back quizzed Philip, and Ruby and the doctor exchanged stories in the front seat.

By the time they were all seated in the dim restaurant, silence rightly and quietly came over them. Ruby helped by telling again the story she had told Fanya on the train of how she knew Motek as a boy at school before the war. Spontaneously, they took turns, as each added a piece to the puzzle that was Motek, who they had just helped to bury. For maybe all of them, Ruby realized, it was the first funeral they were attending since before.

That Motek was beloved came through clearly. The older couple who had stood through the burial, elbows locked, holding each other up, explained that they were cousins of his mother. They remembered him as a boy in the country, younger than they, who were teenagers before the war. They didn’t play together back then, but when they saw his name on a list of survivors, they sent a letter without a second thought. So for the past two years they had seders together in Augsburg where the couple had settled into another camp in the American zone.

The two women friends around Ruby and Fanya’s age began telling first how they knew each other and then how they had met Motek last year: at a restaurant like this one, but noisier and closer to the train station. Dining at separate tables, they had ended up inviting him to join them for dessert. And he had told enchanting stories of his parents’ coffee house in Krakow where he was put to work as a young boy. They recalled his telling how he helped out, making people happy with enough whipped cream to keep them returning. It was the years of want; it was good to have a little extra. “Creamy flesh,” he said to us, the dark one recalled. “Motek said the whipped cream used to make him dream of touching his cheek to some girl’s. He talked about ‘stroking the softness’ of women.” Ruby’s memories linked with theirs. It could have been her sister Pearl he still remembered, she thought, but would never know. The memories were hers alone.

The day had ended hours ago and they were all still talking, in every possible combination. It was another link in their broken chains, under repair now. They promised to get together after the ritual thirty days of mourning to toast Motek’s memory. Fanya and Ruby were exhausted with talk. The train ride back to Landsberg was soothing. They were silent together. Filled with stories to pass on. For Ruby, her brother Max, and another part of her missing sister was laid to rest in her heart. She and Ilya were to be married. The love she had for him she would live for two, and many more. She would make her heart big enough to love all that Max and Pearl would never get to see.

As the train slowed its pace coming into the station, from the window seat she could see Ilya waving both his arms to catch her and Fanya’s attention. Before he could even realize it, she was hooked to his eyes. By the time they had their arms around each other on the platform, they could have been swimming together, tightly coiled, like the eels in a pail she remembered seeing one day when she and her sister passed an old man fishing from a bridge in town.

• • •

Dearest Masha,

Nothing is better for my mind than when I have time to write to you. I see your face as I remember you. I imagine the place I see in the photo you sent me. I think back to the dining room table in my parents’ house, and I can see them, sometimes writing letters. Here I am now, at my small desk with quiet moments to share words with you. Stories from my small world.

Let me begin with some good news. I have to tell you about the connection I made with a young German woman in town here. She and a friend own a fabric store that I have been stopping in from time to time. We began to speak to each other in a more and more friendly way over the past few months. And we made an arrangement that I would sew a skirt for her and she would let me have some fabric for very little money so I could make something for myself as well. A few weeks ago I brought her what I had made, a skirt and a vest because I had extra material, and she loved it! It was such a rare moment of us both being happy because of something we could do for each other. A German and Jew, imagine that, in such a short time. But really, we are just people to each other. That’s what she and I became. It makes it feel more possible to simply be living here in Bavaria, while we all keep waiting for the next stop.

But there is sad news, too, that I want to share with you. You must remember the beautiful coffee house owned by the Lencher family? Not too long ago I found in a list of names their son, Motek, who was alive, and living nearby. I made efforts to write and find out more about exactly where he was staying only to learn that he was in the hospital in Munich. Ilya and I visited about three weeks ago, and last week, my friend Fanya and I went to his funeral. Oh, Masha, how can I begin to tell you what it felt like to be at a funeral? And I had only just found him, in time to see him once before he died. The visit we had was so wonderful. He remembered me and Pearl as young women he knew through our brother, Max. I always thought he had feelings for Pearl, and when we spoke of her, even as pale as he was I thought I could see him blushing. He remembered our parents bringing us there on Sunday afternoons when he would be working at the café. So satisfying it was to be talking to someone from home. And now so sad to have lost him again. I needed to tell you this. I know you understand in your own way since you left everyone behind so many years ago. Your courage then helps me now to go on. And Ilya’s love and Fanya’s friendship. I hope you don’t mind being the audience for my sorrows and my joys. It is so very meaningful to know you are there, to be in touch as adults, and to continue to hope that one day we may see each other.

All my love to you and all your loved ones,

Ruby

• • •

I’ve been breaking into pieces too much these past few days, Ruby told Mala. And today was just about it! I don’t want to think about it! I don’t want to know from that place!

What place, Mala asked? She was bracing herself; she knew Ruby would explain, but she wished she didn’t have to hear. Ruby, always making it her business to think, to feel. When it was better not to.

You know, my always kvetching Mr. Grynbaum? I do my best to ignore him even as I hear his latest fury. Today, first thing in the morning, there he is at my door, at the office. I just want quiet time to catch up on paperwork. But no, he comes to report on an insult. Always wounded, this one. Like we don’t all have our bruises to rub smooth.

What was it this time with him?

Someone told him to mind his own business.

So, what’s so insulting?

Exactly! But here’s what made me so upset…. He made me remember. Those words, “Mind your own business.” They frightened me once. Pearl and I were walking home from school. We were thirteen. You want to hear this? It’s a long and bad story. More than one story.

Do I want to hear it? No, but you know I’m listening now.

We were walking fast because it was cold, windy and snowing. We decided to take a short cut through an alley not far from the building where we lived. We thought the wind wouldn’t be so hard there and it would save time. We were carrying school books. I know because we dropped them nearby in a frozen puddle. When we turned into the alley, two boys were fighting. The bigger one had his foot on the smaller boy’s chest. He was spitting in the boy’s face. We saw it. We were close enough to hear it. We stopped in our tracks, too nervous to move or to turn around. I knew Pearl would be too scared to speak, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was awful. We could see the boy on the ground had a bloody nose. There was light on his face from a window. I said before I could think, “Leave him alone. He’s already hurt! Leave him be!” The bully kept his foot on the boy and looked right at us. So did the boy on the ground. And then the big one said, also without thinking just the kind of thing he probably said when he could get away with it, “Mind your own business, nosy Jewish bitch!”

And you and your sister? You didn’t talk back then, did you?

I knew who I was dealing with in that moment. I put up my hands and dropped the books in a bit of a shock, and I let him see we were getting out of his way. I knew he wasn’t finished with beating the other boy, but I also knew there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. We backed away to go the way we came from, the longer way home. I picked up the books fast, took Pearl’s arm in mine and we turned toward home. We were shaking from the cold and the fear and the shock of his calling us names. But the sight of him stepping on that boy and the sound of him spitting in his face—I can see it like it was this morning when Grynwald showed up at my door.

I felt bad for him, even if he is such a pest and a miserable man most of the time. You know he tries to win me with sweets every once in a while when he knows I’ve lost patience for his demands and complaints.

You said, more than one story . . .

Oh, Mala, you really have the patience . . .

What else have I got? Nowhere I need to be but here to listen to you and your troubles today. Did something more happen with those boys?

No, we went home. I remember we had something warm to drink when we came in from outside. We never told our parents. We hardly ever spoke of it again after that night. Before we went to sleep we said a few things about how cruel boys can sometimes be. How little we knew of cruelty. Petted, loved girls that we were.

But there was a Kapo in Belsen at the end, the last winter of the Lager. A bitch she was, too! She said the same words to me one day when I wasn’t standing quietly lined up for the morning counting of bodies and lice still alive. A girl in my row was shaking so badly from cold or sickness or just fright, the other four of us did our best to get her in the middle before the German came to our row so she wouldn’t be so noticeable. And we wouldn’t either. She saw me moving positions in line, and before I knew what was happening her whip came fast across my knees and she might as well have been spitting when she said, “Mind your own business, nosy bitch!”

Ruby, this is why it’s good to forget. You’d remember that? For what? What good is it!

I didn’t try to remember, but when Grynwald came to me today, it was all just there. The boys. The Kapo. And I couldn’t forget. I haven’t.

Now you put that away from you. Today! For good!

You know I can’t. But I know what you mean. Always trying to figure out. Forget. Remember.

• • •

Ruby wasn’t feeling too well, but the sun that woke her from the same old dream of drowning erased the night and made her eager to join the others for their expedition. There was a pool, outside the town, where the friends had been going now that summer seemed here to stay and where they felt at ease, in a group, speaking several tongues—even as young German strangers, some in families, some in courting couples—just like them—also went to shake off the heat of these days. It was early for such a spell of warm days. For the past two weekends, it seemed as if everyone she knew was heading off to this swimming pool, where they could enjoy being outdoors, nearly naked, and no, not suffering, not shivering, but doing this thing Ruby had learned from the Americans to call “relaxing.”

Feeling young and ready for pleasure was something she could remember when she was barely a woman, and those memories—though filled with loved ones no longer here—urged her into this day. “Fun” was another word she’d learned recently from those Americans whose work took them to the camp, to her office. Like that American officer, Leon, who she was sure was flirting with her. That appeared to be his way with women, she could see. They had danced together to a tango record someone had brought to the party organized for his 30th birthday. He was a great dancer, holding her tight and getting her to follow his quick steps and turns. So she warmed up to him easily, like the sister she used to be. She had Ilya waiting for her.

Now that the women were all ripe again—babies everywhere—she was anticipating joining the breath of it all. It was true. There were couples who weren’t having it easy. There were miscarriages sometimes, and she knew at least two women who had to take to bed for their last months to be sure the baby would be all right. Ruby would sometimes think how different everything would have been if she and Pearl had stayed together. That last look between them froze her heart every time it came back. They each had to go with someone older to protect, their mother, or to be protected, by Max. If they had both managed to survive. A vain wish, but a twin’s wish. There were the stories that went around from the women who spent time in Birkenau, tales of twins, terrible tales. And yesterday at the office was the story of the couple who were going to fly to America—no long wait to board a ship and cross the ocean—but their good luck came from bad. Their son had a rare disease common among Jews, and a doctor in St. Louis was researching this disease, and they were suddenly granted all the papers and permissions that some spent years waiting to get.

Ruby took sharp aim with her knife as she sliced the cheese, and then the not so fresh bread to make their sandwiches for the afternoon. With each cut through the softness and then the hard, she kept telling herself that today was for the pleasures of summer. It was a day to put away regrets, to look into Ilya’s eyes, and to find ease among the friends who filled her heart so it didn’t ache all the time. A Saturday morning, a basket of food, the bicycle ride holding Ilya by his skinny ribs. He was devoted to her. He often told her that she saved his life. His hands were so alive, his eyes so alert, so eager to meet her own, his arms so ready to hold her up, hold her close. They saved each other’s lives, she figured.

And none of them knew why they were saved. For the children who appeared like magic. Like ripe fruits, ready to feed them all. She was maybe a few days late.

• • •

The sun was strong—no shade anywhere around the pool. But Pavel, who was trying to court Mala, insisted they line up for a picture.

“First the ladies!” he worked to get them in line. They arranged themselves behind Ruby. They were not yet wet, just sweaty and itching to get themselves totally soaking—a regular mikvah—even if it meant getting their hair wet. She couldn’t see their faces, but she could feel their bodies, imagining everybody lined up, hands at the waists and hips of the one in front. Holding the pose like this for Pavel with his fancy new camera bought on the gray market in Berlin. Surely she wasn’t the only one who was remembering freezing in the snow, their hands in the armpits of the one in front or to the side at roll call, at the Appellplatz. Ruby pulled herself back from the memory into the moment. Pavel was getting all the details just right, and he wanted them to smile for him, all together.

“I could just tickle you,” she whispered to Mala, “and that would spoil Pavel’s plans, but he might get a better picture of us all.”

Mala shushed Ruby. She wanted this to be over fast. Her bathing suit itched terribly. Once the picture-taking was done, they could get wet and be more comfortable and cooler, too. Mala leaned her head forward toward Ruby’s to let her know they were trapped and held in this moment together. Ruby felt Mala’s hair touching her cheekbone and wondered whether this girl would ever give herself to the effort they all were making to find ways to live. She pushed men away, one after another, always another excuse for why this one was too small, that one too bossy, and then there were the ones who were a little bit crazy, a lot sometimes, and Mala had a nose for the crazy ones. Once she figured them out, she made sure they never came back for another try.

• • •

Starting over—another chance—that was everybody’s song. But the slate was far from clean. They were all carrying their aches and pains. These days, they were mostly aches of the heart; all their bodies were strong. Look at Ilya, lying on the ground, next to all the girls, just for the photo. He was skinny, but he could lift her up without any effort at all. Sometimes, like today, maybe when they finally got in the water, he’d hold her up from below, like her father and brother used to do at the lake at Zakopane on hot summer days like this one. Sometimes she could hardly remember, and sometimes she was flooded with memories: of her father, her mother, her brother Max, but most of all Pearl, her baby sister—by five minutes!

The sun was heading down, shade was coming over the pool. They had all exhausted themselves in the sunshine and in the water. The men and some of the women had spent a good part of the afternoon in their end of the pool catching, throwing, and hitting a soccer ball with their heads. The antics were mostly amusing to Ruby. She wasn’t much of a swimmer, and she couldn’t really spend that much time being wet with nothing to do. So she had gone in and out, getting wet, cooling off, gossiping at the side of the pool with whoever else wasn’t in the water exercising. The heat alone was enough to tire her out. She found herself in a longer conversation than ever before with Chana; she was the girlfriend of Bela who insisted on being called Bobby. It turned out that she and Chana had both shaved a few years off their age when the war was over. Ruby felt those years had been stolen from her and it was her way of taking them back. Chana had lost a sister three years younger, and for her it was a way to remember her sister, she said, and she, too, felt those years lost. They found a corner and bobbed up and down together in place, just staying cool and wet.

“What a perfect summer day!”

“Yes, Bobby is happier than I’ve seen him in a while. Did you see his new camera? He takes good photos, some for the camp newspaper. You’ve seen them, haven’t you? He’s been offering to take pictures, portraits really, of couples. He’s making a bit of money that way, and gaining a reputation. Maybe it can be his real work all the time, not just a hobby. Everybody wants photos since we have no old ones. Did you manage to save any from before?”

“Yes, I did. I have two photos I kept in my shoes or tucked into my armpits. One is of my big brother and my mother, and the other is of me and my twin sister, Pearl, when we were maybe one-year old. I feel so lucky that I managed to do that. What about you? Do you have any pictures at all of your family?”

“None. But I see them sometimes, the photos that used to stand on a shelf in our apartment in Lodz. I can almost see the details of what my parents were wearing when they married, and what my grandparents looked like surrounded by their three children and some of us grandchildren. I can certainly see my grandmother’s big bosom, and my grandfather’s long, white beard. He was old-fashioned even then for someone living in the city.

“We should probably get out of the water. The sun is going down and I hear the church bells ringing six o’clock. Look at those birds in that tree in the far corner of the pool. They found the shade. And what a racket they are making. They must think it’s time for them to take over the water. So many of them at once in one tree. I wonder what kind they are? A bit like us, crowded together, and happy that way.”

“Ladies, it’s time to come out of the water,” called Bobby. “Time to head back to the dining hall so we can feast on something that tastes nothing like anything my mother ever used to cook!”

• • •

Ruby glanced over her shoulder into the mirror, made sure the seams of her brand new stockings were straight, and went to answer Ilya’s recognizable knock at the door—always three taps, volume increasing. His patience, mixed with worry, threatened a flood the closer he got to Ruby’s door, so he breathed more deeply. Even though he could count on her broad smile at the sight of him, until she took him in her arms the drums of his nerves couldn’t settle down. Until they met he had not been sure why he had lived when so many around him just gave up, became ghosts and died. Waiting for Ruby to answer the door, he could hear his sister Sadie’s voice, irritating him.

“She should have seen you in your black galoshes and green army raincoat,” Sadie kept on reminding him. She couldn’t seem to share his good fortune. He couldn’t understand why Sadie and Ruby didn’t get along.

But here Ruby was, smiling, bringing day back into the evening.

“Come inside, Ilya, it’s cold and windy.”

That smile. And when she said his name, he just wanted to close his eyes and listen to her talk. Conversation with Ruby was exciting even if it made him feel he’d never be enough to keep her happy. Tonight was the last chance to get together, just the two of them, before the wedding on Sunday. They were both eager, and nervous. They kept checking the looks in each other’s eyes to be sure it wasn’t some dream. If it was a dream, it was the same one that everyone young and fit enough was having. Nightmares—those were close friends—but a dream like this one, of love and a future together…. Only Sadie had come along to throw cold water on his pleasure.

Ruby, in her own prayers and fears, kept assuring herself that her parents and sister and brother were there somewhere watching over her and saying, yes, this is a good man. You have our blessings. Live, marry him, give us grandchildren someday soon. Children who should never know what we all went through. Those replies to her prayers were so real they shoved the nightmares away, shut them up.

She noticed that when she and Fanya got together with a few of the women these days everybody had agreed to tell only new tales.

“No more old stories,” they needled each other. It was as if they could scare themselves to death now—when it was slipping from memory. More than when they could hardly talk at all. Ruby, too, preferred to discuss the men, the office, the new shoes, coats, dresses they were sharing and accumulating with each passing season. She couldn’t help noticing that the more they got the less they shared.

Every mitzvah usually brought out the best. For her wedding to Ilya, she’d watched and listened to stories of what they still called “organizing,” like in the Lager when you organized to get an extra bowl of soup, or someone would find a German willing to trade two candles for shabbos, and nobody even dared to ask what he got in return. Now they were organizing to get, or buy, or trade on the black market for new cloth, table linens, a set of sheets for gifts, and then trading favors with the women in town. The few who weren’t afraid to talk to the Germans made connections to these women. These were carefully calculated connections. There was something they were finding they could do for each other. There were the German women with furs—they had seen them in town last Easter. Women with shopkeeper and banker husbands who had found for their wives fur jackets, shawls, collars, and even a coat here and there. The German women willing to barter with the Jews seemed almost thrilled to be asked such shocking favors by the women bold enough to ask. To do a favor for the Jews from the DP camp, up the hill. The Jewish women, among themselves, thought it was the least they could do, the Germans. Who would have imagined such deals? Just a few seasons back it was an extra crust of bread you got if you were smart and not scared. Now Hildy reported that her German, Sophie, had agreed to loan her a beautiful silk scarf to wear to Ruby and Ilya’s ceremony in exchange for enough chocolates to last a few weeks.