“Look around you, honey. Are they letting you leave this camp?”
“Well, no. But they’re not going to keep us here forever. They’re just trying to get through all the paperwork, that’s why it’s taking so long.”
“Where do you plan to go?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Somewhere with a conservatory. If not in Germany, then Paris, Milan—”
“You’re just telling yourself that,” he says. “There’s no place for Jews in Europe anymore.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You haven’t been outside the camps. Believe me. Europe is a hollow shell full of hollow men. Let me ask you, what do you know about Eretz Yisrael?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, of course. You’re not one of those ‘destiny’ types, are you?” I say, trying to tell myself I’m not one of those, either.
“I’m from the Haganah. The underground. Shh.” He winks.
“The underground?” I huff. “What’s the point? The Nazis are gone. Why be so secretive? Why not go back to Köln and start again?”
“I did go back. Köln is a total ruin. And where exactly do you think the Nazis went? They’re back home, sweetheart, getting their jobs back, still in charge, but without the brown shirts. Do you think that once you get out of here, your neighbors will suddenly be in their right minds just because the war is over? That you’ll somehow emerge into a sane world?”
“I guess I never thought about it.” A whole town, a whole country, of Maria Büchners.
“Well, you have to face it. There’s a past here, but no future. In a Jewish homeland, we have both. It’s the only place we can go. And if enough of us join together, we can protect each other. Our own army, our own schools, where we don’t always have to convince our neighbors that we don’t, in fact, poison wells or make matzo with the blood of gentile children. Where this can’t possibly happen again. Haven’t you ever thought about it?”
“I’m German,” I whisper-shout. I’m growing angrier, and I don’t even know why. “My family’s been here for centuries. Why shouldn’t I stay in Europe?”
“Because they’ll always see us as foreigners.”
“But now that the world knows what the Nazis did to us? Come on, Michah, we’re not hidden in the shadows anymore. Slowly but surely, we’ll rebuild our lives. And what will happen if all the Jews leave? Then what? Then we’re just a distant unknown to them and, yes, then the whole thing could happen again. We have to go back.”
“Oh, my pretty little friend,” Michah says, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes. “Don’t you know your own history?”
My throat starts to tighten. I sniff hard—a trick Maria taught me to stop the tears from falling—and look away, folding my arms.
“Oh. I see,” he says. “Never learned about your own people in your sweet German school? All that time, while the nurse was analyzing the color of your eyes and the length of your nose?”
“I didn’t go to school. I had the Ahnenpass. I didn’t know….”
Several people are already finished and getting up to leave. I begin collecting my dishes to follow them. Michah reaches out and grabs my wrist.
“Listen to me carefully. Every single century for the past two thousand years has had its own version of Jewish destruction. This isn’t new. Sixty years ago, it was the Russians. Before that, it was Damascus, and Spain, and England, and France, where they burned nine hundred Jews alive because they thought we masterminded the Plague. We’ve been in those countries for generations, too, right? Don’t you think they would have realized by now they were wrong about us? After two thousand years?”
I have no answer. This stranger’s hand is still clenching my wrist. I wrench free of his grasp.
“You’re fooling yourself,” he says, sopping up sauce with his last piece of bread.
“You don’t know me!” I stand up suddenly and hit my knee on the table leg. The room goes silent. “You know nothing about me. I’m not some Zionist. I’m—I’m barely anything at all. And I don’t have to be. I don’t have to do any of this!”
I throw my napkin into my bowl and run out.
* * *
—
Back in my barracks, I crawl, weeping, under the worn blanket and soak my thin pillow with tears. I need my papa. He was my only home. Reaching under the bed, I draw out the viola case and tuck it in next to me. Its black leather covering warms to my body, and I cry myself to sleep, right in the middle of the morning.
My father’s viola.
It is a forest. It is a living tree. It is the heartwood of our family. My father’s viola is over two hundred years old, even older than Germany. It is the color of well-done pastry, shining like apricot glaze. Its fingerboard is molasses and its neck is honey. It is butter and creamy tea, as warm as Papa’s arms, freckled like Papa’s arms, strong and foundational like Papa’s arms.
My father’s viola does not scream; it pleads, it woos. It is the distant forest voice calling its child home at twilight. It soothes fever and melts like a lozenge over the throat. It is a blanket that warms but never stifles.
The tuning pegs are carved of some butterscotch wood, caressed into smooth rounds. Its chin rest is made of the same—what your cheek would be if it could. The chin rest is Papa’s shoulder, Papa’s chest, the hollow of Papa’s collarbone. The f-holes are spindles of his pipe smoke on Sunday evenings by the radio. Two hundred years fade into the dark stain on its edges, smoke-black, dark as a forest river, dark as the plexus from which its song comes.
The viola’s song is in a language no one knows; it reads from the alto clef, not the treble. It stays out of notice, but its absence is felt before it is named. It is the wisdom of the orchestra: the old woman who says almost nothing, except the one thing needed.
The instrument is alive in my hands; it trembles like a child who is too frightened to name her terror as she proceeds deeper into forest darkness, carrying a lantern of warm oil. I lay this child in her bed of blue velvet and hide her away at night where no one can find her. In my hard bunk in the orchestra barracks, I always used to put the case under my ankles so my father’s viola would sleep in peace.
The viola is as much a part of my father as his hands or his voice. I carry him with me; we sing together as we dig secret tunnels to freedom.
Outside the main camp gate is a secluded place I’ve been escaping to. The British guards know me; they know I will come back. I turn on a little charm, and all is understood. In the afternoons, before orchestra practice, I bring a sweater and a small square of old canvas tarp, in case I want to sit on the ground. Just past an old, flooded shed, the ground turns spongy under my heels and sends up the bready smell of decomposing grasses. My one pair of shoes is not up for this; the autumn mud works the muscles in my thighs until I come to the dry meadow path.
I walk slowly here, in and out through patches of sunlight like empty mansion rooms, methodically listening to each footstep press the grass. About midway through, the limbs of a stand of birch tree hold up the forest’s form like women’s bones. This grove has a magnetic pull, beckoning toward a carpet of blue-green mosses where I long to lie on my back and sing into the leaves. But it is a place where bodies were stacked, and I don’t want to make friends with trees that once hid the dead.
The day’s last flock of gray birds congregates above the seedheads of spent wildflowers and launches across the yellow green into a slate-blue sky. The waving stems scatter papery white moths, who go down again to hide in the dark grasses. Along the shrub-lined trail, I begin to raise both arms and turn around, around, dancing down the meadow path to a cricket chorus. I find one of their notes and sing with them. Louder I raise my voice until my rusty throat begins to burn with the song and I can feel a new breath come in—deep, past my lungs into my belly.
Something rustles in the brush: it freezes in place as we become aware of each other. A deer? Bear? Adrenaline rushes along the current between me and the unseen creature, and we are alert without seeing o
ne another.
“Hello,” I say in a plain voice. “Who’s there…”
A figure emerges.
Michah.
His eyes are narrowed and he is smiling at me with an idea. He has a rucksack and a jacket tossed across one shoulder, and he is chewing on something. The breeze catches his hair and plays with three rogue locks.
“Nice song,” he says. My heart begins to beat faster.
“I was just…,” I begin, my jaw tightening with the memory of our argument. “Never mind. I can go.”
“Nonsense,” he says, climbing over the brush. “I was about to head back. Don’t let me stop you.”
I take a step farther down the path. He changes course and joins me.
“Seems we had a fraught parting last time,” he says. “Remind me of your name?”
“Gerta.” Annoyed, nervous—I’m not sure what I am.
“Right. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset. I mean, I was, but I was just all over the place, that’s all.”
I wish he would leave.
I hope he stays.
“You told me you were in the Women’s Orchestra, right? Viola?” I look at him and concede with a little smile. “See? I remembered. I saw you last night at the concert, in the new camp band, didn’t I?”
“Oh, I’m surprised you noticed,” I say, abruptly pivoting on my coldness toward him. “How did we sound?”
“Ha—who am I to judge?” says Michah. “Sounded great to me. Must be nice to play for pleasure again.”
“Yes. It’s nice, yes. We’re going to give a concert every Thursday night. You should come again. If you’re not busy.” I smooth my hair, suddenly conscious of what a walk in the woods will do to wild a person.
“I’ll do that,” he says.
We walk on, slowly choosing each step, talking about what we remember of Köln, about Chaim and Rivkah.
“Before the war,” he says, “all my aunts and uncles came over on Sunday mornings for my mother’s strudel. The cousins—we used to get so full of sugar, she’d kick us out and make us run in the park along the Rhine.”
“The Rhine! I haven’t thought about it since I was little. I remember, I used to ride along the river on the front of my mother’s bicycle.” It makes me ache. I can’t bring myself, even now, to face the finality of the word gone.
The light is fading, and the whole meadow is covered in purple shadow. The amplified sounds of the forest floor under our feet make me realize we haven’t said a word in several minutes. We come to a fallen tree in the path. He climbs up and offers me his hand. I take it without thinking. In one motion he pulls me up and grabs me around the waist. I drop my sweater.
“You know, you have this look about you,” he says, “like you’re missing something.” His face is uncomfortably close to mine and I can feel a heartbeat. It might be his; it might be mine. “I’m going to take three guesses as to what it might be.”
One—he kisses my temple.
Two—my jawbone.
Three—an explosion of softness on my lips, the taste of apples and a recent cigarette.
He pulls his lips away so slowly, I feel like I’m being emptied into the space between us.
“Was I right?” he says, still grasping me close. His eyes are bottomless. A scar bisects his eyebrow. I take my deepest breath in months.
“Three more guesses,” I say.
Twilight.
I’m not sure I’m walking in a straight line. Licking my lips, electricity running through my fingertips, I drop my sweater again.
“Guten Abend, Fräulein,” I hear a cheerful voice say behind me.
Lev picks up my sweater.
“Hi,” I say, a bit annoyed to have my intoxication interrupted.
“Did you read my letter on Monday?” he asks in rapid, clipped words. “Maybe you’re wondering why I wrote it. I mean, we see each other every day. It’s just that my thoughts are clearer on a page than hanging out there in the air.”
“Yes, it was…nice.”
“Nice, as in ‘nice to get’? Or ‘it had nice things in it’?”
“You know, both, I guess.” I just want him to hand me my sweater so I can go back to my room and meditate on the velvety feeling on my face.
He presses on. “Have you heard anything from the Brits? You know, any family willing to sponsor you?”
“No, I, um—”
“Because I’ve been searching. So far, I haven’t found any relatives still alive. But I wondered if you had.”
“No, no one. It was really just me and my father, you know.” I’d rather think about anything else than this right now.
He sighs. “It’s crazy—I had such a big family. There’s got to be someone left. I just have to keep looking. You should, too. You never know!”
“I’m pretty sure there’s no one,” I say, curling my toes in my shoes.
“Well, God willing, there’s someone out there waiting for both of us.”
“Maybe.” I feel the spell from Michah’s kisses lifting away, and my skin tries desperately to cling to it.
“That reminds me of this time my uncles—they were twins, and they used to play this joke on everyone—”
Just then, Michah walks by under the streetlamp on the other side of the square. He catches my eye and winks at me. He’s going toward a green army tent near a group of pine trees, camouflaged among the tents of real DPs. I didn’t realize that’s where he stayed. But of course—he’s not officially supposed to be here. This is how he must live, going from camp to camp, blending in and recruiting people to go to Palestine.
He’s going to leave, I think. I can’t let him leave.
Lev is still talking.
“Lev,” I interrupt, “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.” I jog toward the tent.
“All right. But, Gerta!” he calls after me. “Will you meet me tomorrow? In the grove, before supper. I left another letter for you. I have something to ask you—I wrote it in there.”
“Sure,” I call back indifferently. “See you tomorrow.”
“Wait!” he calls. “Your sweater!” I run back to take it, but Lev holds on for an extra moment. “Tomorrow,” he says softly. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Gerta.”
“Hello, Lev.” I can’t look at him; I squint at the cold light on the distant field.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” he says.
I look at his shoes. I never realized how meticulously he keeps them polished. “We meet here every day, Lev.”
“You know what I mean.” Like a little boy, he picks up a dried seedhead and plays with it, not looking at me, either.
“Right. Your letter. I read it.”
“All right. So…let’s talk.”
But we don’t talk. We just stay there fidgeting until the meal announcement. I don’t know what to do with his letter, and he doesn’t know how to just say it.
The bell rings for supper.
“Should we—” he fumbles.
“Yes, let’s talk inside. It’s freezing out here.”
We walk into the dining hall in silence. There is the warm, yeasty smell of fresh bread and roasted chicken. Trays of bright red fruit pudding wait at the end of the line. But it feels like a feast for someone else.
Suddenly Lev thrusts his hand back and grabs mine. I know this isn’t done where he comes from. But he is holding my hand. His fingertips are stained with ink. His palm is rough. I can feel his pleading in the squeezing of my fingers. And just as quickly, he lets go; he seems stunned at himself for acting on such an impulse.
He takes his plate from the server and we find a seat. Someone has put jars of dried branches on the tables, arranged with stems of seedheads from the field where I kissed Michah. Lev sits down across from me.
“Gerta.”
A leaf falls from a branch, and I press my fingernail into the space between its veins, cracking it into pieces.
“Gerta, do you know what I’m asking you?”
> “Yes, Lev. I wish you hadn’t.” Nervously, I rub the tiny fragments of dried leaf into dust between my fingers.
He leans in close, suddenly earnest. He crosses his arms to avoid repeating his lapse in judgment. His pale lashes reveal the world behind his hazel eyes, and that world is trembling, dangling, like a lone bright planet in dark space.
“Let me put it this way, Gerta. Do you see these people around us? Each one of them is in the same situation as you and me: trying to find a way not to be alone. I’m not talking about being in love, exactly, if that’s not what you want. Maybe we’ve both been through too much for that. We could just be…friends. For life.”
“But we’re babies, Lev.”
He looks down at his hands. “In Kielce, I would have had a wife and a child by now.”
“I’m not from Kielce.”
“No. And I’m not from Köln.”
I stare at the fragments of leaves under my fingers. I don’t dare tell him about Michah.
“I don’t know how you feel about me, Gerta. But somehow, I think, when the chance for love—or something like it—comes up alongside you, you should take a walk with it. See it as a gift, or at least an opportunity.”
“Okay, Lev,” I say at last. “There was a boy in my choir, Rudolf. We liked each other. A lot. He asked his parents if he could study viola with my father just so he could come to my house. He’d stand there staring stupidly at me the whole time. But just like that, he stopped coming, with no explanation. Maybe he moved on to another girl. Boys are fickle. It’s like my father used to say: ‘The only constant in this world is change.’ ”
“I don’t see things that way,” Lev says sincerely.
“Maybe not, but what makes you different from him? You and I are friends, yes, but once we’re out of here, who’s to say one of us won’t change our mind?”
“I have no intention of changing my mind.”
“Lev,” I say, “we’re friends. But you want a wife, not a ‘friend for life.’ I want to get out of here and live before I even think about marriage. Besides, until all this happened, I didn’t even know I was Jewish. And my experience of what that means? It’s this place. It’s fear. It’s death. I don’t want that life. I don’t know a god, I don’t know a family, I don’t even know myself. I might be a horrible person after all.”
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