“What else?” he interrupts. “You also said we could go with Breine and Chaim on their boat.”
“We could go with them on their boat,” I continue, a bit thrown off at how quickly he seemed to dismiss the option of going home. “Or, there are ships, I suppose, to anywhere in the world. We could go somewhere else,” I blurt out. “We could go to—to Sweden. Or Argentina, or America.”
“I wanted to go to Norway,” Abek says suddenly.
“Norway? Since when?” I laugh. “Why?”
He looks down. “There was a man who was nice to me. He was from Norway. He told me there are all these—they’re not rivers, but they’re like that. And mountains.”
“Fjords,” I supply. “They’re inlets, I think. Okay, we could add Norway to our list. Anywhere else?”
Does Josef want to go to Norway? a part of my brain wonders, but I quickly swat away the thought. This conversation is about Abek and me. It’s not about Josef. “The thing that’s most important is that you need to be back in school,” I say. He makes a face. “You do. You probably haven’t had steady lessons of any kind since Mrs. Schulman, when you were eight, and you’ve never been in a real schoolhouse.”
“Can’t you teach me?”
“That’s not really a permanent solution. I need to be thinking about how to make money and take care of us.”
“I could work, too,” he offers.
“I don’t want you to work. You’re too young. I want you to still have a normal childhood. School was important to Papa and Mama; you remember.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m not a child.” There’s a testiness in his voice, like I heard when I wouldn’t let him have the wine at the wedding.
“Well, I want you to still have a normal life,” I amend my statement. “Normal twelve-year-olds go to school.”
“Normal twelve-year-olds don’t survive Birkenau by jumping into latrines to hide from the commandant every time there was a selection. It’s too late for me to be a normal twelve-year-old.”
“I don’t care about normal twelve-year-olds,” I say exasperated. “I care about my bro—wait. Wait, Abek, what did you say just now?” In my head, I repeat back what he’s just said, trying to figure out why it sounds wrong to me.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“But your job was to work for the commandant. That was what I worked out for you. Why would you have to hide from him in latrines?”
“I said never mind. I just misspoke. Am I allowed to misspeak?”
“Of course you are, I just—”
“I don’t like talking about the past,” he insists, angry. “And you always want to talk about it.”
“That’s not true.”
“About Papa’s taking over the business, or what Mama used to say about something when we went somewhere at some time, or why Aunt Maja wasn’t married, or what old friends would want to see me.”
A chatting couple approaches, but they both quiet as they pass. We’ve raised our voices without intending to. The woman is watching us until she sees my noticing and then abruptly picks up the conversation again, in a louder tone than normal. “I don’t mean to be doing that,” I say, lowering my voice.
“You’re always testing me to see what I remember and what I don’t. Like you think there’s something wrong with me.”
“I’m not.”
“It feels that way.” Abek turns away, shoulders hunched protectively near his ears. “Why does it matter if I remember what lies you told?”
“Because it’s our story. Because it’s important.”
“Because it’s important to you. It’s more important to you than I am.”
“Abek!” I’m taken aback by the words coming out of his mouth and by the sudden vehemence with which he’s saying them. “That’s absolutely not true.”
My first reaction to Abek’s unrest is to tell him that he’s just imagining things; of course I’m not doing what he says I’m doing. But even while I want to do that, I can’t help but be confused and alarmed.
How did this conversation get out of control so quickly? I can’t mark what made Abek so suddenly angry, and I can’t help worrying that the anger is covering up something else. I don’t like the way this conversation is making me feel. I don’t like what it’s pulling at, what it’s teasing out of my brain.
Why wouldn’t Abek remember the deal I made for him to work for the commandant? It seems so basic, such a basic piece of our story. Is there something he’s not telling me? Something so awful he thinks I can’t handle it? Or something he’s not remembering? How could he not remember such an important detail of our past?
“Let’s go back,” I say, exhausted by the conversation. “Let’s just go back to the cottage.”
“You’re lost in thought.”
A hand touches my arm gently, and I jump. It’s Josef; he raises his hands in apology. “I’ve been calling your name for a few minutes. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t—I mean, you’re right. I was just lost in thought.”
I’ve just left Abek at the cottage. When the awkwardness between us didn’t seem to abate, I told him I needed to go for a walk. My feet took me immediately to the stables, where my feet have taken me several times over the past few days. I’m standing in the doorway, too distracted to go inside.
Josef walks back to his three-legged stool and recommences cleaning out some brushes and combs. Every time I’ve come here, Josef has been in the middle of something—mucking out a stall, fixing a tool—and he always greets me as though he’s both surprised to see me and not surprised. In the beginning, I took this for indifference, but soon I realized he’s just trying not to get his hopes up and expect me. I didn’t see him at dinner. I still never see him at dinner.
I see him after dinner. I see him on midnight walks, when he stops and kisses me against the rough wall of the stables. I see him in the dark of his bedroom, when his hands no longer fumble at the buttons on my dress. But then, after, I sneak back to my own cottage. And I eat dinner with Breine, Esther, and Chaim. And what Josef and I have together seems both ill-defined and important, but he mostly stays apart from everyone but me.
Today, while Josef does his work, I take an apple from the burlap bag and hold it below Feather’s nose. Her mouth is warm and fuzzy in the palm of my hand as she takes the fruit and nudges me for another one.
“Something’s bothering you?” Josef asks.
“No, I’m fine,” I answer.
But I guess I wait a beat too long before answering, because instead of nodding and moving along with the conversation, Josef looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “Is there something in particular you wanted to talk about?” There’s trepidation in his voice. He’s worried, I realize, that what’s not fine might have something to do with him.
“I just had an odd conversation with Abek,” I say. “He’s said some things I don’t understand.”