“Of course.”
She leads me up a narrow set of stairs, wooden and squeaking, to the wing where children are already asleep. At the second room, she lowers her voice to a whisper. “This was my room at the time; now we’ve given the space to the children.”
She opens the door just wide enough for us to slip through, and I blink to adjust to the light. Four single beds line the walls. Plain, but the bedclothes look clean, and each has a spare blanket folded at the foot. It looks like a fine place to sleep. Warm and tidy. Why wouldn’t he stay and wait for me to find him? Or if he left, why wouldn’t he come home, as I told him?
In the dim shadows, I recognize the boy in the bed closest to the door. It’s the little one from supper, the one who had been sneaking extra food. He sleeps with his knees tucked to his chin and his arms wrapped around them.
Quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping boy, Sister Therese lifts up a corner of his quilt and shows me the mattress below. It’s been sliced open, and inside, what at first look like rocks are actually lumps of bread.
“He’s afraid there won’t be more,” she whispers. “They’re always afraid there won’t be more.”
AS JOSEF AND I CLEAR THE TOWN AND DRIVE DOWN A DARK road through its outskirts, the wooden bench seat digs into my bony buttocks in a vicious way that it didn’t before; every rock sends a pain through my back and down my phantom toes.
“So do think it was him?” Josef says quietly after I’ve told him what happened. “The boy who came to the convent?”
“I don’t know.”
“It seems like good news, though.”
When I don’t respond, Josef turns to face me. “Good news, right? If it was him, you missed each other by only a few months. Or, do you not think it’s him?” He cranes his head to try to look at me. “Zofia?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, unable to find the words to explain my complicated feelings.
Do I think it was him? He was a boy from Sosnowiec’s region who had been through Birkenau and was looking for his sister. Could there have been many boys like that?
But… I can’t picture Abek stealing money from people who needed it, people who had been kind to him.
I stole Dima’s money. I stole money from someone who had been kind to me, because it was the only way I could think of to find my brother. It’s the only circumstance in which I could imagine myself a thief. Was it the same for Abek? Is the theft actually the best sign that it was Abek?
I can’t figure out how to articulate everything in my head. How my hope is eaten by guilt that I wasn’t able to get there sooner. How hearing about someone who might have been Abek is not the same as finding Abek. How arriving a few months too late feels the same as never arriving at all.
The situation with my brother is not the kind of thing where there are compromises or half measures. Either it is Abek or it isn’t. Either I’ve brought him home or I haven’t.
“But if she saw someone who might be him a few months ago—you’re being ridiculous,” Josef insists, breaking my train of thought. “Do you have any idea how lucky some people would feel with that news?”
“I will feel lucky,” I blurt out, “when the person riding next to me in the wagon is my brother and not you.”
It was a rude thing to say, but I’m so exhausted and so confused. And most of all, I feel I’m owed a rude thing to say after the things Josef said earlier. When I see him wince at the insult, I almost apologize. But I don’t want to open up the conversation again, and I would rather him be hurt if it makes him stay quiet.
Neither of us say another word. He drives, and I sit like a statue; the road is long and empty. The only sound is the two horses clopping over the dirt. When, after an hour, it becomes too dark to see the road in front of us, Josef pulls up to a house where a light still burns in the window.
“I think we should stop for the night,” he says, and I don’t protest. “I’m going to go in and see if they know of a place to sleep nearby.”
Josef leaves me with the wagon. Feather whinnies softly in the dark until he returns a few minutes later. “We can stay here, in exchange for helping out with chores tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll sleep in with their daughter. I’m in the barn.”
Josef takes my valise, still stuffed with all the belongings I packed this morning, when I hopefully thought I might not return to Foehrenwald at all. Before he carries it to the door, Josef turns back and opens his mouth like he wants to say something. He doesn’t, though, and neither do I.
The couple waiting by the lamplight is older, the man white-bearded and the woman with a gentle slope in her back. We’ve caught them as they were heading to bed; the woman—Frau Wölflin, she introduces herself—is already wearing her nightgown, her graying hair trailing down her back in a loose braid. They don’t seem to mind that we’ve shown up nearly in the middle of the night. Frau Wölflin says they leave the lamp on just for that reason. They need help with the farm, and they feed and bunk travelers in exchange for assistance. She hands a stack of blankets to Josef, and while her husband takes him out to the barn, she pours me a glass of milk. I hold it and try to respond to her polite questions about how far we’ve traveled and the conditions of the road.
“It has been a long day for you?” she says.
“It’s been a long day, Baba R—” I start and then stop, humiliated. I almost called this woman my grandmother’s name. It’s not even as it was with Gosia. I have no excuse; I barely know this woman. I’m just so exhausted.
Frau Wölflin doesn’t notice the slipup. Or if she does, at least she doesn’t say anything. “I mean, it has been a long day,” I correct myself. “Thank you for asking.”
“You don’t need to drink that.” She nods at the untouched glass of milk on my lap. “If you’re tired, you can go straight to bed.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but perhaps I will. We were riding for a long while.”
I don’t know what I was expecting when Josef said I could sleep in their daughter’s room. But by the age of the Wölflins, I think I believed the girl would be my age or older. Instead, when I follow Frau Wölflin up the narrow staircase and wait as she whispers in her daughter’s ear—Hannelore, we have a guest; Zofia is staying with you tonight—the blond pigtailed head that stirs beneath the duvet belongs to a child, not more than eight or nine.
“Don’t worry.” Frau Wölflin smiles. “Lore is used to this being something of a boardinghouse. She won’t be startled to see you in the morning.”
When Frau Wölflin leaves, I slip off my shoes but realize too late that I left my overnight valise downstairs. Rather than fumble my way down in the dark, I loosen the tie in the back of my dress and then climb into bed fully clothed, easing part of the goose-feather duvet aside and slipping in as quietly as I can.
I’m tired for so many reasons that it’s hard to untangle them. I’m exhausted by hope. I’m exhausted by the fact that I woke so early this morning. I’m exhausted by this country. I’m exhausted by my own body, sometimes, which feels like it might not ever be as strong or resilient as it once was.