"Displaced Persons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Schwarz Ghita)

Identity Papers

The Widow’s House

A JEEP OF BRITISH SOLDIERS dropped him and Fishl at the edge of a large town, with a map, tins of food, half a loaf of bread, and a number of little amenities. Cigarettes. Almost better, a toothbrush for each of them. Identity papers, protected by a brown envelope. Pens. He could feel the shape of the good one in his breast pocket. He felt wary and afraid but almost relieved to be away from the soldiers, at least until they arrived at the refugee assembly center. It would have been better to be among the Americans, who had liberated him. He was not sure about the British, who shouted at him as if he were deaf, or a donkey. He could not yet speak the language, but he was not a donkey. He was not a donkey, although at times he still felt himself to be a zebra, what they called the men who had nothing but their striped prisoners’ uniforms. He wore clean clothes on his narrow shoulders, having organized for himself a used suit from an acquaintance who worked in the storehouse of clothing in the abandoned camp. He no longer looked like an animal. He no longer looked, but he felt: he was a zebra.

They shuffled through the gravel near a large villa, empty and quiet, perhaps belonging to a former Kommandant. Late spring rains had settled the dust from the rubble, making the roads easier to walk past the long gardens and toward the forest. It seemed to him they were walking quickly, but the sound of his footsteps came at a labored pace. His shoes were hard, their bottoms thick. He had hammered scraps of stolen rubber onto the wooden soles, for himself and for Fishl too. Still he could feel the sharp outlines of stone under his feet.

But the shoes were to him better than bread. At the thought of bread he felt his right knee tremble a little, then steady itself. These shoes could bring him to bread, could bring him to any provisions he could organize, could bring him to a resting place in the assembly center for the stateless, a day’s walk away. To clear his mind from bread he pressed his hand into his breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He let it hang from his mouth. He could wait before using one of his matches. Saliva welled around the corners of the cigarette, his stomach began to burn again with the sharp tang of hunger, but still it felt good to have something in his mouth, the almost-taste of the tobacco making him walk faster. In a moment Fishl too would take out a cigarette, and they would share a match.

They walked along the town outskirts, along the border between trees and road, ready to flee into the woods if anyone came after them. Newly liberated, this town, the British expanding their authority, the towns people quiet in their houses, afraid. He liked the idea of Germans waiting inside, not knowing who would knock at the door, drag the man of the house, or the mother or the child, into army headquarters for questioning or punishment. He liked the idea. Still the quietness bothered him. He and Fishl saw a young boy with a large dog playing in the road ahead of them. Without speaking to each other, they began moving deeper into the woods, walking slowly among the trees, seeing the road but not visible from it.

Under a wide plum tree they stopped and leaned against the bark. Now came time to strike the match, and the two of them inhaled the tobacco almost in unison. He looked at his fingers, holding the cigarette away from his mouth. His hands, always slender, looked not brittle but merely thin. Yes, he was stronger now. His hair grew back thick and dark, still short but beginning to curl. He felt the roughness around his chin and cheeks, and felt a shiver of relief: the British had let him use their basin for a shave only yesterday, and already he needed another. It was a healthy man who needed a shave every day.

He looked at Fishl pushing the last bit of the cigarette between his teeth. Perhaps another hour, and they would start to eat a portion of the provisions they had collected from the British. It was important to save. A man knew how to save, how to organize, how to maneuver. He knew Fishl thought the same way. Before the war, he and Fishl had lived in neighboring cities, and their girlfriends had been close; they knew each other only slightly then, trading pleasantries in the same dialect of Yiddish. But now it was as if they had had the same parents, the same home. They were like brothers, a new kind of brother.

JUST THREE WEEKS BEFORE the liberation, convinced they were all to be shot, the two of them had cut through the electrical wire near their work barracks during a blackout and escaped to hide in a deserted farmhouse, one sleeping while the other kept watch. In the beginning, still weak, they had hidden in the barn of a farmhouse until the house was requisitioned by the soldiers, Americans with their shocked faces, equipped with a soldier or two who could translate from German. It was rumored that soon the Russians would come, hunting for women. He and Fishl knew to leave. They had refused to return to the camp, converted from a prison into a refuge. Instead the two of them had moved to the floor of an empty schoolhouse, sleeping, with dozens of others, men and women together, in disinfected military blankets. The soldiers fed them. Not too much, but more than the liberated prisoners received in the camp. People there still died every day, hungry, sick, encircled by wire and guarded by the conquering armies afraid to let the prisoners out into the world, afraid the hunger and sickness would spread and infect. But from the moment the liberators arrived he made sure they understood what he was made of. He would work and learn. He made chess pieces from discarded bits of metal found in the former camp factory, and sold them in sets to the young soldiers, who drew out the grids of a chess game on a bread board or lumber scrap taken from a German family. Yes, a human could make something out of anything, could make the ugliest of objects into a source of pleasure. He still ate the bread they gave him too quickly, he still made a rattle when he scraped the bottom of his bowl with his army-issued spoon, he still craved what the soldiers themselves ate, their meat and their eggs and their milk, but he knew he was coming alive.

WALKING AMONG THE DARK trees, they heard a steady rhythm behind them, footsteps, the slow turn of wheels. They turned. Two men in wool coats, seeming even from a distance to sweat, each dragging behind him a loaded wagon. The wheels of the wagons caught on the tree roots, and the men pulled with their necks bent forward, their shoulders straining ahead of their legs, bodies at a diagonal. They looked like children, small boys playing at a race. But they were men. Not strong, but men. Middle-aged, perhaps office workers, functionaries, Germans.

The Germans stopped moving. He could feel Fishl’s breath turn warmer next to him. An idea with no words ran through his head and pushed his legs forward. He saw Fishl move his hand into his pocket, the pocket with the knife. They went slowly toward the Germans, and he could feel the same rage pulsing between him and Fishl, and without even opening their mouths to speak they knew they were right: the wagons were filled with valuables, money, bagfuls of reichsmarks, gold and silver finery. The men trembled and begged as they gave up their watches, their rings, and their stolen jewels, they looked at the two thin Jews as if it were they, he and Fishl, who were killers. Even as he concentrated his mind on keeping the fury inside his body, he could understand how funny it was, these men in their uniforms, fat men, afraid of former prisoners who perhaps could denounce them, prisoners with one knife between them, liberated prisoners still in their cage of hunger.

In one of the men’s coats-he and Fishl let them depart with only their jackets-was a velvet pouch. They leaned against a birch and opened the soft bag. Two dozen tiny stones.

Is it something? Fishl said. Can you see?

It is something, he answered. In the first work camp a cutter, an older man whose labor he had done on occasion, had taught him to recognize cracks and facets in a diamond. They had been able to keep some of their possessions then, and the man had taken out his loupe and his dead wife’s ring and made him understand how to see. Now in the forest, he and Fishl could only guess. But would men wear wool coats in spring for a velvet pouch of glass?

He took twelve of the diamonds and replaced them in the little bag. Fishl wrapped the other twelve in a scrap of paper, wrapped the paper in a handkerchief, pushed the handkerchief into the bottom of his rucksack. They rolled money into their rucksacks, into their new coats, into their shoes. Now it was he and Fishl spilling over with dirty gold, possessions stripped from the living as they were pushed through the gate of the dead. Spilling over with dead men’s money, dead women’s jewels. He and Fishl might be thin, they might think every hour of the bread they kept in their rucksacks, but already the hunger felt less like a stabbing and more like an itch, for here was the promise of food and more food, for weeks, perhaps even months. They were heavy, solid. Not so heavy that they could not walk-how ignorant these Germans were, how unschooled in the methods of carrying the world on their bodies-but enough so they could not run. The functionaries had run. But he and Fishl would stroll, coats over their arms, walking along the inner perimeter of the woods like two university students observing nature, breathing the green air. They had money. They had money, and they were together. Money could sometimes take the place of force and strength. The fleeing Germans had been right to try and hold on to their bloodstained gold; it could help them. But look how quickly they had given it up!

IN THE REMAINS OF a bombed-out train station at dusk they found an old woman begging for food. Papers and gold safely tucked into their clothes, they showed her their tins of fish and meat from the British and followed her to her house. She showed them to a large empty room upstairs. There was room for both of them in the bed, and they lay down, each covered with a blanket.

All day and all evening the excitement of ownership had made his skin tingle. But now the tingling had become an itch, an uncomfortable dryness on his back and arms. A small chill came over him, and he folded his knees close to his chest.

Fishl, he said.

But Fishl was already breathing in short gasps and snores. Fishl could sleep through fear and thirst. It was a gift, a great piece of luck, a talent, to stop oneself from reflecting and thinking, to conquer the dread with a command to the body: sleep, sleep. His back pressed into the thin mattress, and he breathed in and out. It was good to have a bed again, after the few days in the British military headquarters, where each of them had been given a cot for a few nights, then sent on their way.

He turned on his side, curled his spine. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he looked at the dull wall. A framed drawing of a tulip hung above the chest of drawers, the only decoration. The petals of the tulip were open, one petal almost falling away from the flower. The old woman had a garden. She was afraid to have men in the house. She had walked behind them after opening the door to the house, waited until they climbed the stairs before she herself came up. They had arrived just before nightfall, and at the corner of the road they had seen three houses crushed inward, the skeletons of rooms only half-standing. But this part of the street was untouched. Yet it seemed no one else came to give her food. He shook his head in anger at himself-should he feel sorry for this woman, alone but safe? The walls of her home were still intact and her blankets had not yet been sold for food-this was not a suffering to pity. His grandmother should have had such a decision to make, his father should have suffered so! No, he was not sorry. He thought of the food the old woman would cook them in the morning, perhaps coffee and the fish warmed from the tin. They would trade for her, they would keep their part of the bargain.

Sleep, sleep. In camp he had not been able to fall asleep quickly, the constant fear of the next day troubling him into the night. But now, even with an empty day before him, he felt the same inability to translate his fatigue into rest. Fishl’s snores had faded into strong breaths. He tucked his hand underneath his trousers, pushed his fingers into the hidden pocket, felt for the cotton bag he had sewn to the inside. The cotton was still there, its slim contents pressing against his thigh. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, the cloth warming his hand. A cotton strip of handkerchief, that was all, but it held his most precious possessions. Photographs, one of his mother and one of his father. He liked to touch the handkerchief that protected them, but he did not want to squint in the dark. And they would be spoiled by their exposure to the damp air. He had taken them out so often that when he remembered his mother and father now, he saw them as they were in the pictures, their bodies creased and wrinkled, their skin the color of brown stone, their mouths steady and grave. No, he would not take them out. One had to be careful, not greedy, even with a photograph. One survived a prison if one kept his secrets hidden, as Joseph had survived his prison in Egypt, emerging to bring his family out of hunger, to see his father, who wept that the favored son was alive. There was no seeing his father now, he knew. But he had had contact with his sister in 1943, and with his second brother a short time earlier. Even a cousin-his aunt’s boys, they were strong ones-perhaps they had come out.

He tapped his pocket again. He would give away any of his gold and stones and money, to hold on to those photographs. Still the papers and the money gave him the means to sell and to travel. The photographs might help him sleep, but the money would help him find. He dropped his arms along his sides, feeling the bones of his legs through his trousers.

STRIPES OF LIGHT CAME through the window, and he opened his eyes to a prison cell, cement walls, a damp and tattered blanket around his chest. He did not know how he had come there, but when he turned he could see Fishl lying next to him. He breathed out with relief. Then he tapped at his trouser leg, felt nothing, tapped at his breast pocket, felt no lump from a makeshift pocket, and he sat up in fear. They were gone, how could they be gone? He remembered a word he had learned from the soldiers in English: jail! Had he been searched by the British, the Americans, whoever had given this punishment? But to the new soldiers the contents of his pockets were not valuable. Just to him. Fishl, he cried, Fishl, but Fishl was silent. The air was cool, but when he felt his own neck, it was coated with sweat, and he could sense the stench of bodies-where? outside?-seeping into him, staining his skin. They could be here for weeks, rotting from hunger, shitting and eating out of the same bowl. He heard the step of the guards. Perhaps these wardens would give them other clothes, new prisoners’ clothes, take away from them the stolen wool trousers and jackets meant to make them look like ordinary citizens, humans. Yes, perhaps even these weak disguises would be taken, and they would be left with nothing but their battered faces and worn bodies as identification. He turned over on his side and watched a brown beetle make its way through the damp mud in the corner. The beetle moved slowly, with an even, careful rhythm. It buried itself inside a pile of dark sand, emerged again, then disappeared behind a crevice in the stone wall. The beetle would escape. The beetle would be free. He stretched out his hand toward the beetle and saw his arm was still covered by his own stolen jacket. This was something. Still he knew they would tear the clothes from him, tear them into strips for the hanging, and he pushed the blanket away from his body-let them take it! Let them take it already!

But he was awake, it was sunrise, and he was cramped and hot. He looked next to him, Fishl stirring. There was a toilet downstairs, and when he heard the old woman busy in the kitchen he padded down the steps in his socks. Upstairs again, he saw Fishl already dressed.

I can’t go anywhere, he whispered.

All right, said Fishl. I will go to Belsen, see what is what.

He slept again, then awakened, then moved downstairs to the toilet and returned to the bed, sweating and cold. But it was all right. He did not feel the sickness of typhus upon him. It was only a fever, a small delirium, a reminder that his body was still unfamiliar with its strength. No more typhus. No more-he would be occupied now only with little illnesses, flashes of heat, the obstacles of an ordinary life. If he could live through typhus in war, he could live through a mild fever in peace. He went to his rucksack and pushed down a corner of hard bread. He would rest one day, then venture out in the morning to look for the living with Fishl.

He lay down, curled himself toward the wall of the room, then tucked his hand underneath his trousers, pushed his fingers into the hidden pocket, felt for the cotton bag he had sewn in the lining. He was alone. The wariness he felt at night had dissipated. He could let himself look.

Still there, still there: the two tiny photographs, creased and dirty, the worn paper giving off a sour smell, images he had miraculously saved, hiding them when he had to in his fist, under his tongue. Fishl and all the others he had known would be jealous, pained with envy, if they knew what he kept with him at all times, in his used, free-man’s clothes, clothes with hidden pockets that could protect his images of the human world. The photographs, crumbling and dampened-he must have been a young child when they were taken-were to him like identity cards, identity papers, wordless evidence. He looked at his father’s narrow eyes, his mother’s solemn face. It was a serious thing to make a portrait. His father looked angry when he tried to be serious, but his mother, more calm perhaps, had a softness. Whatever fierceness she had inside her she disguised from the local photographer. More gentle than his father. He could not remember so much as a shout from her. His father, that was a different story. And yet they had made a family.

Yes, he knew who he was. He had not betrayed himself. He may have been desperate for food, he may have been filthy, but he had tried to wash when he found water. He may have stolen, but almost never from someone weaker than himself. He had not hurt or beat, even in the one barracks where he had been in charge of the others, even when beaten himself by a fellow Jew for not beating the others-a fellow Jew!-that man whose memory he would never block out, he was the enemy, he was worse than the enemy! Suddenly a wave of anguish rose up in his throat, and he coughed to muffle it, to prevent it from becoming a cry. He would not, he had not, become what they wanted them to become, animals desperate to live, no, something uglier than animals, for animals did not kill except for food. He had not fallen in war, and he would not fall now. He still had his photographs, and now he had money. It was peace.

He heard a footstep, the old woman padding about. He stood and leaned against the windowpane, his eye on the doorway. The room was clean, but the paint looked years old, and there was a smudge on the doorframe, a few centimeters below the top of the door. His heart started beating fast, for no reason, and he shook his head to calm down. It slowed to normal, and he sat down, no thoughts in his head.

From the mattress he could see outside. The bedroom window looked out upon the garden blooming with white summer flowers: lily, gardenia, sweet pea. The old woman came out to the garden in the afternoon to tend it. He watched her. It was a modest house but large for one woman. There were men’s clothes in the wardrobe of his room, but not too many. A widow, he imagined. Perhaps with grown children. He watched her bend in the dirt, go into the house with flushed cheeks, breathing hard.

He turned again at the doorframe. That smudge. Then he got up to look closely, his heart steady now. No, it was not dirt but a little set of holes at a diagonal, as if-but there was no other explanation. A mezuzah had been ripped out. This had been a Jewish house.

When he came down to the kitchen an hour later the old woman was gone, a cup of tea prepared for him, no longer hot.

FISHL RETURNED IN THE evening, face gray. I’m going, he said.

What!

It’s something-it’s something terrible there. Nowhere even to-they’ve burned down the barracks to kill the rats.

They’ll come back, he muttered.

Yes, said Fishl. Here at least it is clean.

What did you eat? he said.

Soup, a thick soup. And I have flour and sugar. I gave her the flour. She should not know what we have.

The reichsmarks we can give her.

Maybe.

They were both silent for a moment.

There was an office to give a list of names, Fishl said. To give and to see. But there were none for me.

He could find no answer to Fishl and stayed silent.

Fishl continued. In Zdanow perhaps I will find.

First we could go to the American zone. We have money. We have stones. We can go anywhere. There they will have more lists.

I am losing time, said Fishl. Some might have returned already. And perhaps my father’s property still stands.

He looked at Fishl. Here we are together. Yours will come here, looking.

Fishl shook his head. They could go anywhere.

They had money. Money made one free and not a prisoner. With money, one purchased food and ate it slowly. With money, one moved about the country, not trapped in a transit center as if one still were a slave, awaiting death. He had saved Fishl’s life more than once, and Fishl had saved his too. Now money could pay to save a life in danger. They had money and stones. With money and stones, Fishl was willing to leave him, travel alone, despite knowing little remained at home. With money, Fishl was willing to go, and he was willing to stay.

WHEN THE FEVER PASSED the next day he washed his American army undershirt and hung it from the window. It looked alone there, white and thin. The blue shirt he had from the camp storehouse was not too dirty. He thought of taking some of the widow’s husband’s clothes-what, should he buy from her?-but he did not.

After washing he dressed, his blue shirt against his skin, wandered out into the warm air, venturing to the end of the road, near a house with three walls. He stood apart from the house, clutching his rucksack in his hand, watching the road. There were orders that any driver should pick up a refugee and take him as far as he was driving. A farmer stopped to load him onto the back of his truck, where three men pushed aside the empty potato sacks. The men came from a region of Romania that bordered with Poland, and within the first moments on the truckbed, exchanging information in Yiddish, they knew they would not find a name in common. He took in the smell of the raw potato skin, mixed with the odor of dirty burlap and the men’s unwashed bodies. But it was only a few kilometers to the refugee camp, and the cool air that bit into his skin wafted the smell away. He could see them looking at him with curiosity, envy, his voice steadier than theirs, his clothes mended. He thought to open his rucksack and offer them a tin of something, then thought better of it. They were on their way to fuller rations at the camp. He would let them go ahead of him in the lines.

Half a kilometer from the entrance of the camp the driver stopped to let them down. He tried to walk a bit behind the trio, but they were so slow that at last he moved ahead of them, his eyes fixed on the wire fence surrounding the camp. He turned his head once to see them growing smaller behind him, the tall one leaning on the other two, bodies linked together, each gray costume blurring into another.

A WOMAN WAS MAKING a commotion at the registry for ration cards. The British soldier at the metal desk was shouting, every word enunciated in terrible German, incomprehensible. The woman was speaking in three languages at once, a stuttering German scrambled with Yiddish phrases and Polish words.

He stepped to the side of the line and called out. Let me translate for you, he said in Yiddish. They can’t understand you.

No, she called back, they can’t.

I can help, he offered in German. The British soldier motioned toward him. He pushed himself forward to the front.

She’s making trouble over a thief, said the soldier. Tell her the ration card is for her, not for him. Only one for each refugee!

Only one-he began-

But the woman had understood. What, you want to help them in this? What will you get from them? My brother’s ration card, no doubt. Have you no shame, stealing from your own?

All right, he said. She was a sharp one. He wanted only to help, perhaps find himself in a position to help the soldiers. All right.

She saw his offended look. Her face softened. It’s the boy, she said. They have falsely accused that he-

The British soldier interrupted. Enough, he said in German. One for each of you, now go. He was already stamping the green cards, not even asking for identity papers. It has nothing to do with us! The soldier glared at the woman. Your brother should have known better than to steal like a little animal.

They moved away from the metal desk and into the barracks corridor. But now, out of the hearing of the soldier, the woman turned her speech to him, the words tumbling out, pressured, in Polish. He’s only a boy, she said. Only a child, who had not learned to recognize any law, but a clever one, a good one, they had found each other in a marketplace in their home province, how would he know that the mere act of trading cigarettes, it was not even stealing, only trading, and then of course his false passport, that was what called them to drag the child off like a dog, like a criminal-

All right, he said in Yiddish. You don’t have to explain it to me like I’m a soldier. I know what a hungry child might do.

But she could not stop. The soldiers had taken all the passengers off the wagon. It was like the beginning, all over again! Her brother had fallen in with the smugglers’ brigade, smugglers of food, gold, cigarettes, smugglers of refugees into the western zones, those Jews desperate to go anywhere near a port, a port that would lead them to Palestine or America. She herself, she wanted only to be near the others. What port she was in while she waited, that did not matter, only to be away from the Poles and-

How lucky you are, to have found a brother, he interrupted.

I, she said, her voice suddenly scratching. I-please.

Don’t be scared, he said, the words coming out of him suddenly in Yiddish. Don’t be scared, he repeated. I won’t.

It’s that he isn’t. Her face was flat, but her voice was animated, defiant. I don’t know him. He’s just a young boy who helped me. I said it for them to listen. My brother-I have heard nothing from my brothers, my real brothers-but he-he helped me.

Her blank face and sharp voice pulled at him. He said, The problem is-among the British-it’s difficult to bribe. If it were Russians, we could pay-

She looked at him.

I have money, he said.

She shifted her weight. How do you have money?

Now that she spoke softly, he could hear from her voice that she was at least twenty, a woman. I have money, he repeated.

They stood in silence a moment. Then she spoke. But what-she began-then paused-what is your name?

The question startled him. It was an intimate thing to be asked one’s name. Already he was used to writing his name again in solid lettering, but to say it aloud still made him cautious. One did not say one’s name-those who knew it used it, those who didn’t received a false answer-even on the truckbed with the refugees he had used a borrowed name. He had been name after name, Mendl Abramsky, Abrasha Pavlovich, names that mimicked his own should he be surprised by someone he knew, names that belonged to the missing. He had a friend, a dear friend from the war, who knew him only as Miloch, the name of a dead man he had never met. Miloch: whose root was king. He had liked that name, had pulled it around his mouth before saying it, in a way he never had with his own name, the name he had used in childhood, the name his grandfather called him, the name his teachers uttered in praise.

The young woman was waiting for his response. And he should give it. There in the moldy corner of the registry barracks, he had nothing to hide.

I, he replied in Yiddish, I am Pavel Mandl. Pavel. Abram. Mandl.

And then, the next question, as if they were meeting at an outing for young people: And what is your name, miss?

Her name was Fela Berlinka. And the boy, she tried to add, Chaim-

Don’t cry, Fela, said Pavel, although there was not a tear on her face. Don’t cry. We will find your little friend and we will take him out.

They walked out into the courtyard and leaned on the side of the building, their backs against the splintering wood of the barracks. A group of three women, one covered in nothing but a blanket, moved slowly toward the corner where Pavel and Fela stood, then hurried past the open door.

Let us think, Pavel said, facing the road, his eyes on the backs of the British soldiers who guarded the wire fence. It was nice to speak to a young girl, even if her belly swelled from her bones like an empty pocket, even if her dust-blond hair parted to reveal spots of scalp. He could see, not from her skin, not from her body, but from her manner, that she must be pretty, used to attention from men. That was why she pushed him off a little. Aloof. A woman with dignity.

He rolled his shoulder to shake off his rucksack. He carried with him the valuables, hidden by several tins of meat and a quarter-loaf of bread. She was hungry. But when he pushed his hand into his rucksack, he did not take out the bread: instead he withdrew a slim scarf. Look what I have, he said. Red, with white. If we have blue we have the Americans.

She paused. Also the British.

I prefer the Americans.

To me they’re all the same. But she fingered the scarf in his hands, then took it from him and tied it at her neck.

I have an idea, Pavel said.

THE BRITISH KEPT CHAIM among a group of boys in a locked barracks a kilometer away from the main camp. A handsome child, light-haired, with a surprised look on his face as a soldier brought him out into the sunlight. Fela whispered to him while Pavel stood from afar, watching them. He could see how they might pass for brother and sister, and their resemblance gave Pavel a feeling of relief and confidence. The lie he had persuaded Fela to tell-that the widow with whom he boarded lived in the house of Fela’s own relatives, that it was only right that they take back what had been taken from them-the lie seemed closer to true.

A night passed, another day, but for a watch and only one of the gold chains a man sold Pavel a bicycle and agreed that the house in Celle, only ten kilometers from the camp, had belonged to Jews, and yes, Fela looked terribly familiar, just like the family who had lived there before the war. By the time Chaim had memorized the look of the long tile kitchen, the bathroom with hot-water plumbing, Pavel too was almost convinced that the widow’s house was the home where Chaim and Fela had spent holidays as very young children, children visiting their cousins who still lived in Germany, family who had not fled to Poland in the years before the war.

THE WIDOW WAS IN the front yard, tending the garden. Two British soldiers, accompanied for translation by a German Jew from the refugee camp, swung open the garden gate.

What is this? Pavel heard the widow say. This is not a boardinghouse.

He waited a few meters away, with Fela and Chaim beside him. The soldiers spoke in low voices, but Pavel could make out a few words in English.

“House,” murmured the younger one. “You must-”

“Jews,” the other soldier said firmly.

The German Jew was more talkative. You see, he said to the widow, nodding at the same time to the soldiers. They have proof. It is all down on paper, authenticated. He flashed the sworn testimony of the man Pavel had bribed.

They are lying! cried the widow in German. That man, he boarded here in my house! Those two, who knows who they are!

The German Jew smiled at the British soldiers, shrugged his shoulders. After a brief conference in English he turned to the road, where the three still stood.

Stay here, he said. Wait.

The soldiers and their translator disappeared into the house with the widow. Pavel and Fela and Chaim waited, it seemed for almost an hour, finally entering the gate to cross the garden and sit on the stoop at the threshold. When the translator pushed at the door again, it was to hold it open for the widow, who held a suitcase, and for the younger soldier, who carried a trunk. Pavel did not dare look at Fela and Chaim, who sat next to him, their breathing almost synchronized. Chaim kept his face blank, innocent. Perhaps it was wrong to show a young boy how to take a home. But what should they do instead-scavenge for a roof, fight for space with the rats in the camp? No. This was not stealing. This was living.

He watched the old woman’s face as she walked past him-he could accept whatever empty curse she put on him, just as she had accepted the curses of the family that had been expelled for her. But she kept her eyes straight ahead, refusing to look at him. Her skin sagged a little from her chin, and he thought to grab another tin from his rucksack to give it to her, a pale trade for the house. But he did not move.

The older soldier, who appeared to have more authority, approached Pavel with something in his fist: the widow’s key. Then the soldiers loaded themselves into their jeep and started the motor.

The three of them stood in the garden, Pavel grasping the seat of his new bicycle, watching the soldiers’ jeep putter down the street and turn out of sight.

So, said Pavel.

He looked at Chaim and Fela, who did not respond. They seemed to wait for him to do something.

We will live as one family, Pavel announced. Then, with his new key, he opened the door.