Nalewka, spiced vodka, sweet and strong, the small sip burning my throat. I passed the bottle back, he took his own drink, and returned it to me again.
“I don’t like trains anymore,” he said to me.
“I don’t, either.”
Now this man has become my nameless friend. The seats fill with passengers, and then the aisles fill. The old man and I rise to use the bathroom only when we can no longer wait, saving each other’s seats each time. And then the roof of the train is full, too: With nowhere left to sit, people climb up the ladders on the side of the train or pack together on the platforms linking the cars.
The trip is so long. So long and so hot, and at times I can’t even tell whether I’m awake or dreaming. At times I think I see Abek next to me. My past and my present blend together, and I let them. The hours pass, and my bad foot aches as if all my toes are still there, as if I can still wiggle them. And the days pass, and then my whole body hurts and my whole body is numb, like I’m not sure any of it exists at all.
“For bad dreams,” the old man says at one point, handing me another bottle of something that makes my head fuzzy and my mind quiet. He says this to me after I’ve just woken, gasping for breath. It’s the rhythmic motion that makes my brain scream. As soon as I fall asleep, my body remembers the train to Birkenau. I can tell my brain not to think about it, but when I fall asleep and feel the rhythm of the train, my body remembers.
“For a noisy mind,” the old man says. Another bottle.
This makes the trip bearable. It’s not a cure for what’s wrong with me, but it feels like a temporary solution. The bottles, and the fact that every time I look out the window—every time we stop and women reach up to the window with bread or boiled eggs for us to buy—I know I am getting closer to the place where Abek might be.
Finally one morning, just before dawn, the train lurches to a stop. There are no more tracks, not for a gaping fifty meters. Just remnants of twisted metal sticking up like claws from the charred soil. There are no other tracks we can divert to, the porter explains. No other way to backtrack and join up with a new line. All the tracks in this stretch of land have been demolished. So there is nothing to do but deboard, all of us, and walk ten kilometers to the next usable station.
We stumble off the train, onto a bedraggled barley field. I’m surprised to see clusters of people waiting for us. Mostly girls, my age or a few years younger, wearing farm dresses. Some hold baskets of food for sale—wrinkled plums, underripe apples—but others have no food. They stand by skinny horses hooked up to carts.
“Welcome committee?” jokes my older friend as we stand in puffs of steam and dust.
It soon becomes clear what the girls are really doing. For a fee, they’ll take us in their carts to where the tracks pick up again. They approach the soldiers first, the men in uniform who they know must have spending money. They negotiate prices with flirting smiles, but those disappear as soon as the transaction is finalized and the coins are tucked into their apron pockets.
One of them, a wiry girl of sixteen or seventeen, avoids the competition over near the soldiers and comes to me instead.
“Ride?” she asks me in German.
“I can walk.”
I’m worried about walking, though. Ten kilometers is a long distance with my bad foot, with the pain that still shoots up my calf. But I’m worried more about unnecessary expenses; this entire trip, I’ve been buying only the cheapest rolls.
The girl jerks her head toward the old man. “He probably can’t walk. But my wagon has a cushion for him. And if you don’t ride with me, you might not get to the next train in time to have a seat. He’ll have to stand the whole way.”
“I will pay,” the old man offers chivalrously. “If you don’t mind being my seatmate a little longer.”
The cushion is lumpy, the wagon is high, and the girl doesn’t bother to help either of us into it. She keeps her eyes straight ahead as I hoist myself into the back and pull the old man after me.
We’ve barely settled before she clucks the horse forward.
I’ve been to Germany only once before of my own free will. My father took me on business to Berlin. He said it was the capital of modern civilization: The clothes we saw women wear there would be what we would make for Polish women in five years. These girls now, though, the ones driving the wagons or selling fruit, don’t look fashionable. They just look tired.
We pass a man painting a sign: We’re still a long distance from Munich. But the notice is not only in German, it’s also in Russian, French, and English.
“They divided up the country,” the girl says when she notices me reading the sign. “Four Allies, four corners. All of them get a piece of Germany. Where are you going?”
“Munich.”
“Americans are in charge of Munich,” she says.
“Who’s in control here?”
“Nobody,” she says cryptically. “Nobody controls himself here. Everything is a mess. They’re still finding bodies.”
“Bodies?” I ask.
“From the Allied bombs. Buried under the rubble. As long as they still find bodies, no one will pay attention to the other things happening.”
She turns back to her horse, and then she doesn’t say anything until we’re almost at the spot where the tracks pick back up. The new “station” isn’t an official building. It’s a rusted boxcar, nestled in the grass. Someone has painted a word on the side, the name of the closest town, I presume.
Clusters of soldiers already wait there. They’re bawdier than when they got off the train an hour ago, enlivened by fresh air or girls.
Our driver sets her mouth in a firm line, her jaw working as if she’s deciding whether to say something. Only when she’s stopped the cart and I’m beginning to climb down does she reach out and clamp my wrist with her skinny fingers.
“British or Americans, but not Russians, okay?”
“What?” I ask.
She keeps her eyes straight ahead. “Soldiers can help get things, and that’s useful. But ask British or American soldiers, not Russians. The Russians have ideas of what you owe them. And they’ll take it if you don’t give it willingly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t care if you believe me, but I’m not the only German girl who will tell you that.”
“A Russian soldier saved my life,” I tell her.
“Good for you.” Her voice is full of bitterness. She keeps her eyes ahead, bringing her hand to her throat and rubbing there. “That’s really good for you.”
My limbs ache; my skin is creased with sweat and dirt. No lice, though, I remind myself. No bedbugs. No empty stomach. No room left to complain. I have been through worse.
The old man whose name I never learned rode the train all the way to Munich. He said his daughter was meeting him there, and when we reached the station, he was met by a slim, red-haired woman who shared his nose and broad shoulders. They held each other and didn’t let go, and I didn’t stay to say goodbye. I didn’t have a role in this family reunion.
Then, in the chaotic marketplace of the train station, I found a stand of drivers for hire. Trucks mostly—men calling out destinations and grouping passengers by the direction we’re traveling in.