“Josef?”
“He’s the one going for supplies. We don’t have the other car working yet; he’s best with the horses.”
“But,” I start to say.
“But?”
But nothing, but what am I supposed to say? That I met this man once and insisted he looked familiar? That I got carried away by his laugh when I’m supposed to be doing nothing but looking for my brother? That I kept sneaking glances at him all through dinner, wondering why he was alone and whether I should join him?
Should I tell her I made Josef so uncomfortable he left without even shaking my hand?
Mrs. Yost frantically depresses the telephone button, and I hear the faint, faraway sound of someone on the other end of the line. Her eyes light up.
“I’ll go,” I mouth, shutting the door behind me.
I find him in the stables, a whitewashed building on the outskirts of camp. It smells like dust and the clean hay tamped down on the floor.
He’s sitting on a low, three-legged stool, tending to one of the horses, a fawn-colored animal whose mane is nearly white. A second one, chestnut with an inky-black mane, swishes its tail in a stall. The one Josef is with—a palomino, I think it’s called—stands with its hooves in shallow pans of water. As I step through the doorway, Josef lifts the horse’s right leg, tucking the hoof between his own knees, and begins scraping the bottom with what looks like a long nail file. The horse flicks its tail but otherwise submits.
“Cleaning its feet?” I ask. Josef must have heard someone at the door, but he doesn’t turn to acknowledge me, focusing instead on his precise work.
“Trimming back her hooves. They grow just like people’s fingernails.”
“Does it hurt her?”
“Not if you do it the right way.” His voice is—not friendly, exactly, but not as brusque as it was yesterday. But then he looks up for the first time, and when he realizes it’s me standing there, they darken. He lowers his eyes and continues with his work.
“The water is to prepare her hooves?” I stumble on, pretending I haven’t noticed the change in his mood.
“To make them softer. Easier to sculpt. Why are you here, Zofia?”
I try to ignore the small thrill of hearing him say my name, but I can’t ignore how much I like watching him. There’s an ease to his movement, a gracefulness. I like that when he finishes the front hoof and moves on to the horse’s hind leg, he trails his hand along her back and makes clicking sounds so she never loses track of where he is. I like the way he smoothly draws the stool back to his new position with one foot. I like the slight unevenness of his shoulders, the way one is just a bit higher than the other.
“Can I help?” I ask, instead of answering his question. As soon as I answer, my reason for being here will disappear.
Josef presses his lips together and nods back toward the door. “Actually, yes. You can get an apple for Feather to have as a treat when I’m through—there’s a sack of bruised ones outside.”
On a bench a few meters away, I find a canvas bag and carry it in. Josef motions for me to hang it on a nail, but first I take an apple out to have something to do with my hands. It’s soft and warm; I bring it to my nose and inhale the scent of cider. “Mrs. Yost said you would take me tomorrow when you go to pick up supplies,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. To tell you.”
I expect him to ask why I need to go, but after a small hesitation, he shrugs. “If that’s what she told you. I’ll leave early, though.” He’s turned back to Feather’s hoof, so the only sounds are a soft scraping and the occasional slaps of the horse’s tail against her flanks as she swats flies.
My father, swatting flies off Abek as my family waited to be separated in the stadium.
My bunkmates, swatting flies off me in the textile factory, when I was injured and too weak to work one day and I knew I’d be killed if I couldn’t get better.
“Josef. Your fight yesterday. What was it about?”
“Why is it important for you to know?”
Because I keep thinking about you, and I don’t know why.
“Because I’m going to get in a wagon with you tomorrow, alone, and I would like to know whether I’m going on a trip with someone dangerous.”
He opens, then closes, his mouth. “That’s… I suppose that’s reasonable.”
“I think so.”
“I’m not dangerous,” he says.
“Then what was your fight about?
Feather stamps one of her feet in the pan of water. A gentle stomp, with a gentle splash. Josef stops his work to make sure she’s okay. “It was about you.”
The flush that spreads across my collarbone stems from confusion, but it’s also pleasure. “Me? The fight was about me?”
“Yes. Something Rudolf said.”
“What was it?”
“I want to make sure you understand—it was the third time I’ve heard him say something like that,” he says. “The time before, the girl was only fourteen.”
This, I think, is a way of saying, I didn’t do it for you. Of saying, don’t be either flattered or alarmed, you were more of an excuse than a reason. “What did he say, exactly?”
Josef’s mouth twists. I think for a minute he’ll refuse to tell me.
“Rudolf said, ‘Put her in the right dress and she’s still fuckable.’ He said, ‘In the war, all Jewesses would fuck for a scrap of bread.’”
“In the war, all dirty men were glad for our starvation,” I spit back reflexively, overcome by anger at Rudolf’s disgusting sentiment. “Since they could use it to try to get us to fuck them.”
It’s only after my initial rage dissipates that I feel myself blush, surprised I’ve said those words out loud, less than a day after I also said piss.
Josef laughs, the same sharp, surprised laugh I heard yesterday. Maybe I cursed this time because I wanted to hear that laugh again. And suddenly I am laughing, too. About something dark and terrible and not at all worth laughing at, but I’m laughing anyway.
“It’s true, right?” I press. “A horrible man like Rudolf wouldn’t be able to get it any other way.”
“Something tells me that a horrible man like Rudolf has never gotten it under any circumstances,” Josef says. “He’s a true latrine-puncher.”
“A piss-goat,” I concur.
“I promise you, very few people here were sorry to see something happen to Rudolf.”
“So you’re, what—the avenger of the camp?”
“No.” Josef is still smiling, but there’s less mirth in his eyes now. “I’m not. I’m just the person who doesn’t really care if Rudolf hits me back.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“Nothing. It was a joke.” He turns abruptly back to his work, coaxing Feather’s final hoof out of the water. She nickers again, a noise that sounds almost like a laugh.
“Josef,” I say softly. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday, when I asked about the fight?”
He answers with his back to me again. “Because I didn’t want you to think I thought I was a hero,” he says. “And I didn’t want us to owe each other anything.”