“When you wrote to—” I repeat the words slowly, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. “When you wrote to the camp?”
“The helpers,” he tries to explain. “The soldiers who are there now.”
“But you knew there was a chance he could be in this place and you already wrote to them? Without telling me?”
Dima flushes a deep red. “He was not there,” Dima continues. “So I did not want—so I did not want to worry you, Zofia. I am trying to help. You need to rest. I thought, if I could find him for you—”
Gosia and the commander are staring at their plates, trying to disappear themselves from this exchange. Dima is staring at me, pleading.
“Did you hear from Dachau, too?” I ask. “Or Birkenau? Damnit, Dima, is there anything else you’re keeping from me?”
“Don’t swear, Zofia. You are not a girl who swears.”
“I’ll swear if I want to,” I insist, tears filling my eyes.
He shakes his head quickly. No, he’s saying, no, those places didn’t write back.
Is this betrayal? Is it betrayal if he was trying to help me? If he did it in secret, but the goal was to find my brother? He meant well. I tell myself that. He was trying to help. And, he did help, actually. He found a place where Abek was not.
Next to me, Gosia slides her hand across the floor until her fingers are splayed over mine. “The commander said Munich because a lot of the prisoners from Dachau, after the war, ended up going to another camp near Munich.” She exchanges a few words with Commander Kuznetsov before continuing. “A different kind of camp,” she clarifies.
And now she’s speaking not in Russian or German or even Polish, but Yiddish. The language of our kitchens, of our private family time, the language acknowledging that the commander and Dima are not part of what happened to us. “A big refugee camp run by the United Nations. There are several. They’re for Jews who can’t get back to their homes or who haven’t been able to find their families.”
“And it’s where Abek is likely to be if he was evacuated from Birkenau.”
She takes her hand away. “That’s what he said. It’s called—” She switches back to German. “What is it called?”
“Foehrenwald,” the commander says. He looks relieved to offer a piece of information that won’t cause me to be upset. “It’s impossible to know from here, though, whether your brother is in this camp. The staff is small and overworked. From what we’ve heard, it’s barely organized—it’s thousands of refugees, coming in and going out.”
“Impossible to know from here,” I repeat. Now I’ve switched to Polish, but Dima, to my right, is shaking his head before I even say a few words.
“Abek will come here,” he says. “That was your plan.”
Sosnowiec was the plan. Staying together was the plan. Finding him was the plan.
But what if he forgot the plan? He was only nine. What if he forgot our address? What if it’s not a place he knows anymore? What if he’s stuck, or hurt, or in a hospital as I was?
“Did you know about this place?” I ask Dima sharply. “Is this another place you were keeping from me?”
“No, I promise,” he says. “I didn’t know about this camp. We can write to it tomorrow.”
“We can write,” I repeat. “But what if he leaves in the meantime?”
“If he leaves, he will leave for here,” Dima says simply.
“But what if he can’t get here? Or the letter doesn’t reach him?”
“Zofia, you must be patient, but—”
“What if he needs me? What if he’s alone and needs me right now? Aunt Maja just said—”
“Who?” Dima interrupts politely.
“Aunt Maja. Just now.”
“Zofia.”
“Aunt Maja.” My voice, rising with every syllable, until it’s almost a scream. “Aunt Maja just now said the prisoners from Birkenau went to Germany. Didn’t you hear her?”
The silence in the room, the painful squeaking of a floorboard, is what makes me realize my mistake. My face reddens.
“I mean Gosia, obviously. I know that’s Gosia, not Aunt Maja.”
Quickly, I lower my head to my plate and saw off a piece of cabbage. But I can’t seem to get it to my mouth. In that moment, I did mean it. I was sitting in this dining room, and the person sitting next to me was my beautiful aunt Maja, and I lost myself again.
Next to me, Gosia looks pitying and worried; her eyes flicker briefly to Dima’s. I saw them talking earlier while I finished cooking dinner. I wonder what he told her, how they have diagnosed me.
They think I’m crazy already, so there’s no point in explaining how I was only briefly confused, by being in this apartment.
There’s also no point in explaining the sudden certainty in my heart, which began building at the mention of this place called Foehrenwald. I know that I protected Abek as best as I could. Through all the war, I could feel him with me. If I hadn’t been able to feel his presence, I wouldn’t have been able to survive. I survived, so he must be in Foehrenwald.
“I know it’s Gosia.” One more time I repeat it, more quietly this time. “Never mind.”
Gosia leaves a few hours later when her brother-in-law comes to collect her. She hugs me and says I should come to the clinic tomorrow; they can always use volunteers. Over her shoulder, Dima nods at her. It must be something they planned, an excuse to keep me occupied. “Either way, I’ll stop in tomorrow evening,” she says. “I’ll try to bring more clothing and a spare lantern.”
Now there is only one lantern in the house, and stubby candles. The apartment is shadows; Dima and Commander Kuznetsov are outlines as they talk near the door.
Dima breaks away and comes over, taking my hands. “The commander says there is room for you if you come with us. You can stay there instead of by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine here. Gosia brought me some things.”
“The floor is so hard,” he presses on. “You at least need a—” He searches for a word he doesn’t know in Polish, before mimicking unrolling something on the floor.
“A bedroll? I don’t.” The alcohol is getting to my head; it feels light and spinning. I’m still annoyed with Dima. I’ve slept on so many worse things than a clean blanket on a wooden floor.
“No, I can bring one.” He looks back to where the commander is adjusting his hat, politely trying to give us privacy. “I will walk him home and come back.”
“You can’t keep going back and forth. You’ve already been twice today.”
But he insists, and finally it seems easiest to just agree. To let him bring back a bedroll, to cluck over me like I am a figurine.
I GATHER THE DINNER PLATES, BUT THERE’S NO RUNNING water to wash them with. Gosia and I ate our plates clean. Dima and Commander Kuznetsov left scraps on theirs: a crust of bread, a few leaves of cabbage. On the commander’s plate, a piece of meat, mostly gristle, which he must have discreetly spit out.
It’s blobby and chewed there on the plate, swimming in congealed tomato. I stare at it for a minute, nauseated.