Does that make it wrong, though? Relationships have been built on less.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asks.
“All right,” I say, and then wet my lips and make myself start again. “That would be nice, but you don’t have to sleep out here. I still have only one blanket. You would be cold.”
In my childhood bedroom, where I have not slept since before my family was murdered and my country was broken, I unroll the bed mat brought to me by a Russian soldier. I make it up with the faded blanket brought to me by the friend of my dead aunt, and then I lie down in the dress I’m wearing because I still don’t have any nightclothes.
Dima lies behind me, respectful. His breathing isn’t steady enough for him to be sleeping. He’s awake, looking at me, at the outline of me in the dark. I feel his hand on my hair, stroking from the top of my scalp to where my hair stops. He does it three times, and just as I’m waiting to see if he’ll do more, I can tell he’s waiting on the same from me, to see if I turn over, or wriggle back so my rear nestles in the crease of his hips.
Baba Rose would stroke my hair in this room, intently and reassuringly, as if she had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.
Aunt Maja would stroke my hair in this room, talking through her own problems.
Mama stroked my hair in this room, and though she always seemed tired and sometimes fell asleep with her hand heavy on my head, she also told me fairy tales and sang whatever songs she’d heard on the radio that day.
I hear a crack coming from the next room. I know it’s the sound of an old building settling, but I have to stop myself from crying out: Abek?
Behind me, Dima’s hand has stopped, resting on the mat behind me, accidentally pinning a few strands of my hair to the bedroll below. I lie there, pinned, not wanting any movement to be misinterpreted, and after a few minutes, I feel him shift behind me, turning over, facing the wall, lightly snoring.
The scene from dinner keeps creeping into my mind. Dima didn’t apologize for keeping the Bergen-Belsen letter from me, not really. It obviously pained him to hurt me, but he said he’d done it only to protect me. Do I want that kind of protection?
Is this the best life I can build now? Security and kindness, and a man who will leave in the dark to bring me something soft to sleep on, but keep things from me if he thinks they could cause me hurt? His parents were happy, he told me. He wanted me to know that we could be happy, too. Do I want to be happy this way?
Do I?
I ease out of the makeshift bed, crawling across the floor on my hands and knees so as not to make a sound. In the closet, I feel for the upholstered valise with the broken clasp and fill it with the belongings I have: the undergarments and soap from Gosia, the kerchief from Nurse Urbaniak. My eyes pause on the hope chest, and I wonder if I should take some things from it. But I don’t know how far I’ll have to walk, and I don’t want to be weighed down. And this time I’m coming back, I remind myself. Better to leave these possessions where they’ll be safe.
Dima snores behind me. Near the doorway, I find his clothes, his jacket hanging on the back of a chair, his pants folded neatly on the seat. I slip my hand into the jacket pocket and feel a packet of bills. In the dark, I can’t tell if they’re zlotys, or deutsche marks, or whatever money they use in Russia, but, trying to ignore the pang of guilt, promising myself I’ll make it right later, I take all the money.
I write Dima a note, an insufficient one scratched by moonlight, laying it on top of his pants:
I have to go find him. Stay in the apartment as long as you want. Give it to Gosia if you don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to find him.
The valise is light in my hand. I clutch it to my chest as I ease out the door.
THE LAST TIME I SAW ABEK, ANOTHER VERSION I DREAM SOMETIMES:
I had heard of Auschwitz. We all had by then. Rumors of torture, rumors of death.
Please don’t send us to Auschwitz, I begged the soldier in charge of guarding us when my family had left the stadium, when we’d been sent to tenement apartments on the outskirts of the city to await the next leg. Please not Auschwitz; we can work hard. Especially my brother. Didn’t I hear you say your commander needed a good errand boy? My brother would be a good errand boy. He’s healthy; look at him. He already speaks three languages. Wouldn’t this be useful?
This young soldier said he could manage something, but it would be a big favor, requiring payment. I put my hand down his pants; I was very pretty then. Three minutes later, he agreed. He wouldn’t send us to Auschwitz. He would send us to Birkenau.
The train crawled along the earth. By the time we got to Birkenau, we’d been on it for so long. The distance was short, but we kept stopping, for hours, with no reason or warning, nobody paying attention to our pleas. The car was crowded, so crowded we didn’t even stumble when the train lurched. During the first night, people began dying. Bodies sank to the floor while the rest of us tried not to step on them and begged for water. My father gave us his. That whole trip, my father didn’t have any water at all.
I didn’t realize, of course, that there could be more than one city of nightmares, and so close together. The soldier whose pants I had reached down had kept his promise in the cruelest of ways. In a way intended to mock us. I realized it almost immediately.
Like Auschwitz, Birkenau was also on the outskirts of the town called Oświęcim. It was constructed barely a kilometer away from the original camp, built because the original camp could not keep up with the volume of people it was designed to torture and kill. The soldier sent my family to Birkenau. He didn’t tell me that it was also known as Auschwitz II.
We reached the gate, Abek and I. We were sorted to the right. He walked into the camp in his jacket with the alphabet sewn in the lining. And then he turned to me because suddenly this was dream Abek again, not real Abek. It was dream Abek, and he was walking away from me, saying goodbye, and I was trying so hard to stay there with him, but instead, I was waking up.
Part Two
Allied-occupied Germany, September
I CAN TELL WHEN THE TRAIN CROSSES THE BORDER INTO Germany.
When the train is still in Silesia, this annexed land that was Poland once and maybe is again, the tracks are haphazard and the route is meandering. The ticket master at the Sosnowiec station warned me: The Red Army was dismantling tracks, digging up the metal ties to create routes that would lead to Russia, not to Germany. The Katowice-Munich line was once direct, but now the route is circuitous—we backtrack, we divert, we reach portions of the track where multiple locomotives must share a single line, and we spend entire days waiting for another train to pass. While in Poland, the tracks and the land look confused and forgotten; the train feels like a mouse trying to escape a maze.
But I can tell when the train crosses the border into Germany, because here, the same rolling hills become scorched and scarred. The green farmland is interrupted by angry black gashes cutting open the earth. Everything was bombed here, recently, by the Allies, who were trying to cut off the German Army supply lines.
We move even slower. We stop even more frequently. Train employees tell us the tracks ahead are being cleared of debris.
An old man took the seat next to me just before the departure. He had a full gray beard and a dark coat, and he reminded me of my grandfather Zayde Lazer. He didn’t say anything at first; I wasn’t even sure we spoke the same language. But as the rumble of the wheels began, sending vibrations up our legs, he pulled a small bottle of amber liquid from his coat and handed it to me for a taste.