“You’re so big,” I say after a few minutes. “It’s been such a long time. I’m going to have to get used to the fact that you’re not the same little brother I remember.”
A few feet away, Abek plucks at a loose thread on the quilt covering my bed, and I do the same on Breine’s.
I let another moment of silence hang in the air before speaking again. “This is strange, isn’t it? It’s wonderful, of course, but it’s also strange.”
Abek nods before I even finish the sentence, relieved I’ve said it first. “Yes. I didn’t really know what it would be like. But it’s a little strange.”
“We don’t have to figure it all out now.”
“I know.”
“You must be exhausted,” I say, noticing the dark circles rimming his eyes. “I’ll sleep on the floor, and we’ll borrow some extra—”
“I don’t want you to sleep on the floor,” he interrupts, flustered. “I’m sure there are men’s cottages.”
“No,” I protest. “It’s late; we’d have to disturb the staff and wake people up to get you an assignment. The floor is fine, or I could squeeze in with Breine, or Breine could with Esther. Those are my roommates; I’m sitting on Breine’s bed. They’re probably waiting somewhere to give us privacy.”
I’m babbling again, the way I was when we first came into the room. But now it’s not nerves, now it’s me not wanting to let my brother out of my sight. Tonight I want to fall asleep knowing where my family is, and my family is the two of us.
“Abek,” I say, suddenly thinking of something. “How did you end up in Munich to begin with? I came here because I thought all the prisoners from Birkenau were sent to Dachau. But Buchenwald—I know that city. It’s hundreds of kilometers from here. How did you end up here?”
“Because I also heard the prisoners from Birkenau were sent to Dachau.” He sees that it still hasn’t registered for me and continues to explain. “I didn’t know you never came back to Birkenau, so I thought you must have come to Munich.”
“Were you the boy Sister Therese told me about?” I ask. “The boy who stole the food money from her room?”
He flushes a deep red and nods. “I know it was wrong,” he begins.
“It wasn’t wrong; it’s what helped me find you! I mean, it was wrong, but…”
“But I did it anyway,” he finishes. “Because you said we would find each other. You said we would find each other no matter what.”
I sleep that night with my hand dangling off the bed, onto the mats and blankets we’ve set up for Abek. I want to be sure of—I don’t know what. That he won’t be taken again, I suppose. That he won’t vanish into thin air.
It still feels like a fairy tale, almost. Like the dust of a fairy godmother sprinkled over a town to lull it to sleep. Something too good to be true, something that could dissolve any moment. But it doesn’t dissolve. And for once, I don’t go to sleep fearing my own nightmares. For once, I know they won’t come. The last time I saw Abek doesn’t matter now that I have a first time: the first time we were reunited.
I wake in the middle of the night, once because my arm is cold, untucked from the covers; once because it has fallen asleep; and once more because Abek turns over and his hair tickles my fingers. But he is there; that’s the point. Every time I wake up, he’s still there.
The third time, I see he’s awake, too, his eyes glinting in the dark, looking up toward my bed.
“Can you not sleep?” I whisper. “Are you thirsty?”
He shakes his head.
“Should I tell you a story? Should I tell you our story?”
I begin the alphabet story, quietly in the dark. I begin with the letter A, with his name, with the great-uncle Abek who died a few days before his birth. I move on to Baba Rose, and to Chomicki & Lederman and the busy hum of the sewing machines, and I whisper and whisper until my throat is sandy.
“O is for—” I begin, and then I cut off, because I can’t remember what O is for. I haven’t had to go this far into the alphabet in a long time. I’m out of practice and full of holes. Below, I see Abek shift in his blankets. “O is—” I start again.
“O is for Lake Morskie Oko,” Abek whispers. “Where there was the cabin.”
“Oko,” I repeat in wonder. “That’s right! We had the cabin. The water there was so deep and green.”
That’s where we used to go every summer, where we were on holiday before the Germans came. The clear, frigid water; Papa walking about in his undershirt; Mama reading novels on the porch, a half-eaten apple resting on her stomach as she let the dinner hour pass without putting anything on the stove. I’d forgotten completely. Abek has given me such a gift, to remind me of it. The gift of memory, the gift of our past. The gift of something I hadn’t been able to complete on my own.
I continue on, but only get through a few more letters before hearing Abek’s breathing even out, realizing he’s fallen asleep.
“Good night,” I whisper.
WE WAKE THE NEXT MORNING TO A KNOCK ON THE cottage door, the outer door first, where Judith answers, and then on our bedroom door. Esther stumbles into her dressing gown to answer this knock while the rest of us blink our eyes open. Me, with my arm still dangling off the side of the bed, and Abek, with puffy eyes and a look of confusion as he remembers where he is.
It’s Breine’s uncle, a tiny man named Świętopełk, who looks like Breine in the jaw. He has an old-fashioned, courtly manner—an elegant way of removing his hat—that seems both out of place in this camp and appropriate to his name, which is an old one I’ve only ever seen in history books.
Breine hurdles out of her bed, and then she and her uncle cling to each other. She told me that before the war, she’d seen him only twice in her life; he lived far away and wasn’t close to his brother. Now they are each other’s only family, and the old rifts don’t matter.
“Our wedding,” she announces, wiping away happy tears. “We can have our wedding tonight.”
I’m apprehensive, at first, that Abek’s first day here will be so busy. He deserves time to rest, not to be thrown into chaotic wedding planning. We both deserve time to settle in. I watch his reaction to Breine’s announcement, worried that he’ll be too overwhelmed. But, unless I’m imagining it, what I see on his face is mostly relief.
“Don’t worry about the dress; I’ll wear a potato sack,” Breine tells me, but keeping Abek’s expression in the corner of my eye, I shake my head.
“Of course I’ll finish. Nobody in my family would ever let a bride look anything less than beautiful. Isn’t that right, Abek? Can you imagine how angry Baba Rose would be?”
He smiles and shakes his head. I decide it will be good to have this distraction. Busyness can be a relieving antidote to a lot of things: grief, awkwardness, confusion. A wedding will be welcome.
Word spreads quickly that Breine’s uncle has arrived, and all through the day it seems as if the whole camp is helping to prepare for the wedding. Men gather wood and fashion a chuppah, and women in the kitchen try to turn rationed food into a celebratory feast. A friend of Breine’s, whose ancestors are from Spain, produces a small bag of walnuts, which she says she kept with her in hiding all through the occupation, determinedly saving them for a special occasion. This seems miraculous to me, that on the brink of death and starvation, she could keep walnuts. But she did, and now she grinds them to make wedding cookies.