“Where’s your mother?” Mathilde’s face looked funny, crumpled.
I shrugged. “Cooking?” I was still balancing, seeing how long I could last. If I put my other foot down I would lose.
“No. I looked in your house.” House. Our two bare rooms.
“Then at the market I suppose. What is it?” Something must have happened. Could a telegram have arrived? News of Willi?
“A ship burned.” The adults had given up trying to protect us from the relentless news of the war.
My second foot hovered above the earth. “What ship?”
“Orlita!” Miguel tossed his pebble at my foot. “Kantuta!”
“The Orazio.”
The Orazio. We had been waiting for the Orazio. Every time one of the families in our community expected someone on one of the ships, we all waited. Every family member was our family member. Every lost friend or relative was our lost friend or relative. Despite our vast social, cultural, and educational differences, our refugee status bound us. We passed around every bit of good news—a daughter found alive in Shanghai, a father who made it to the Dominican Republic—as we shared our favorite novels, with generosity and passion.
I tried to remember who was expected on that ship. The Hirsches? The Rosenthals? The names scattered like dry leaves before my pursuit; I could not catch them.
“All of the ship burned?”
“It sank.”
“¿Vas a jugar o simplemente estar allí como un flamenco?” Are you going to play or just stay there like a flamingo? Miguel and the others were growing impatient. Lowering my foot, I stepped out of the squares, away from their game. “Sorry, Miguel.”
* * *
• • •
AS MATHILDE AND I walked up the slope to the market I thought about who might have been lost. Could Willi have been on that ship? But he would have let us know to expect him. Mathilde didn’t try to speak to me; she seemed far away, in her own mind.
The market wasn’t crowded and it didn’t take long to find my mother. She was standing in front of Nayra’s vegetable stall, transfixed by a pile of blue potatoes. Since our first visit to the market, we had been loyal to Nayra and her potatoes. Often, I stayed behind to talk with her once my mother had moved on, though she was shy and reluctant to speak. Aymara people are private, Miguel said. They don’t trust white people. And why should they?
“Hola Nayra, qué tal?” She nodded, a faint smile hovering on her lips. I touched my mother’s sleeve. “Mutti?”
She turned toward me, her eyes still on the potatoes. “Do you think they are blue inside?” At the market, my mother spoke to everyone with her hands, preferring gestures to Spanish. When I went with her, everything went much faster.
“I don’t know. Mutti, Mathilde says that the O—”
“What would they say back in Vienna if we made blue latkes for Chanukah?”
“They look good, Mutti, but—”
“Julia.” Mathilde found her voice. “The Orazio.”
My mother’s body rippled as if she’d felt an electric shock. Her eyes focused on Mathilde’s face for the first time. “What happened?”
“It caught fire. There are still 104 missing.”
“And who—?”
“The Neufelds. Their son and daughter. And the Kahns were expecting her sister. I can’t remember who else.”
“Not Willi?” Now I knew why Mathilde had been so anxious to find my mother.
My mother shook her head. “He would have told us.” She turned to Nayra.
“Fünf,” my mother said, holding up all the fingers of her right hand. Nayra nodded, plucked a handful of dirt-crusted potatoes from the stack, and placed them gently in my mother’s basket.
“Un boliviano.” My mother held out a handful of money so that Nayra could pluck the correct coin from her palm.
Clutching her basket to her chest like an infant, she turned toward Mathilde and they began walking toward home. With a small wave to Nayra, I followed.
* * *
• • •
MY MOTHER AND I were making pancakes. I beat together eggs and flour in a pewter bowl while my mother mixed up pitchers of Klim. I was quiet. Listening. I hadn’t thought it possible for my mother to make Palatschinken without humming. She always hummed or even sang when we cooked together in Vienna. Now she moved around our small room with a silent, grim determination, slicing the apples as if they had insulted her personally.
She hadn’t wanted to make the pancakes; it was my idea. I thought it would be a nice thing to make for the passengers of the Orazio—those who were left—when they finally arrived. After their injuries were treated in French and Italian hospitals, the survivors had been collected in Genoa once again and put onboard the Augustus. We expected them later today.
For weeks we’d been planning the welcome party, funded by the Maccabi Sports Club and the Jewish Community Organization. Mathilde had come to our rooms to ask what we could contribute. She would be helping to make the Schnitzel.
“I’d be happy to play,” my father said. “If you think that would be appropriate?”
“Would you? Your quintet?”
“I’ll ask.”
“Julia?”
My mother gazed out the window as if she hadn’t heard the question.
I tried to think of the most special thing that we could do, something we knew how to do together, and I remembered that once, in a faraway land, we had made pancakes.
“Mutti.” I touched her sleeve. “Could we make Palatschinken for the survivors?”
My mother smiled faintly. “Here? It would be difficult.” My mother had shown little interest in cooking beyond what was necessary.
“They’re pancakes, how can they be difficult? Besides, the other women are making difficult things. Austrian things. I’ll help. Please, Mutti?”
In the end she couldn’t refuse to exert herself for a group of people whose suffering was greater than our own. Frau Gruber loaned us her widest frying pan and we rose early on the day of the party to start frying stacks and stacks of paper-thin pancakes over our kerosene burner.
Next to my mother, I sprinkled cinnamon and sugar over the apples, stirred them over the flames, and spooned the puree into each pancake. In some of the pancakes we tucked a savory filling of salty Bolivian cheese and spinach (the Bolivian spinach had a bitter aftertaste, but it wasn’t bad if you mixed it with something else), and in the last batch we rolled a thick jam we made from tumbos and maracuyas.