The Red Thread

by Rebekah Pace

  “Yes.”

  “The cops want to talk to you.” He must have seen fear in my eyes. “It’s all right. Just to take your statement.” He carried my shopping basket and held me by my arm. Even though I tried not to let on, my knees were shaking so badly his grip was the only thing that kept me from falling down.

  In the front of the store, two cops were dusting everything for fingerprints—even the little potato chip bags that always hang beside the cash register. Benny’s gun was on the counter. The music box lay on the floor, and one of the cops bumped it with his foot.

  “Oh man.” Benny let go of me and knelt to pick it up. The lid hung crazily on a broken hinge. “Pete, I’m so sorry. It got broken.”

  “Is no problem. I fix again.”

  “Really?”

  “Pssht. What else am I doing?”

  When one of the officers asked if I was able to identify the suspects, I hesitated. I’d been around long enough to know those kids would be back on the corner soon—maybe even today. How could I defend myself if they jumped me? “I was in the back,” I said, “Didn’t see nothing.”

  I could tell Benny was disappointed, but all he said was, “I’m going to walk Mr. Ibbetz home.” He reached behind the counter for a couple of bags and loaded up my groceries, setting the music box gently on top. One of the cops unlocked the door to let us out.

  As we walked toward my place, I tried to apologize. “You’re a shtarker, Benny, that’s what you are. Such trouble. Such trouble.”

  “Aw, come on, Pete. It’s over now. Don’t give it another thought.”

  “Oy vey. Also, I am forgetting to pay you.”

  “Seriously? Don’t worry about that. Pay me next time you come in.”

  When we got to my building, my hands were still trembling so badly I dropped my keys. Benny picked them up and unlocked the front door.

  “Which apartment is yours?”

  “Second floor. Apartment Two-B.”

  He matched my pace on the stairs, and I let him unlock my apartment door, too.

  “Wow. Cool place you got.” His eyes roved over the room. “Love the retro vibe.”

  I tried to see it as he did. There weren’t any family photos or personal stuff. The furniture he called retro is what the Gittelmans had left behind, thinking it was junk.

  “My abuelita had a porcelain-top kitchen table like that when I was a kid, but hers was red and white. You could probably get about four hundred bucks for that if you wanted to sell it.” Benny set the paper sacks on the counter and put the stuff that would spoil into the fridge. “I got lotsa good memories of her and her cooking. She taught me how to make tamales. You gonna be all right now?”

  “Yes. I am fine.” What else was there to say?

  “See you tomorrow, huh?”

  “You are being open tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there. You can count on it.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, I turned the lock and latched the chain. I wished I’d asked him to stick around a little longer.

  ***

  After I got cleaned up and put on a fresh pair of pants, I carried the music box to my worktable and examined it. Several of the picks in the comb were bent so badly they could not play their notes. When I wound the key, the gears made a grinding sound and the cylinder did not turn. I sighed and got out a screwdriver to remove the lid and started buffing out the scratches.

  That evening, I listened to the Phillies game while I worked. Baseball was the first American thing that interested me, and back in the day, the Yankees won the World Series five years in a row, from ‘49 to ‘53. When the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, I listened to their games, too. I most enjoyed the sport early in the season, when every team had a chance in the standings. Though I listened to that entire Phillies game, my mind was elsewhere. I couldn’t tell you who won.

  I delayed going to bed until I could scarcely keep my eyes open, but when I turned out the light sleep did not come. I lay awake for what felt like hours, but I must have slept some, because my eyes flew open at the rattle of a passing truck. Just like that, I was wide awake, heart pounding, every little sound amplified. Certain I had heard footsteps in the hall, I crept out of the bedroom and stood near the door, listening, until I felt safe enough to get back into bed. How would I cope the next time I had to leave the apartment? The last time I checked the clock, it read 3 a.m.

  4

  As I blinked back the sunlight streaming in the open window, a lilac-scented breeze set the curtains swaying. There was no hum of traffic, no noise from the street. No sirens. Just silence.

  The crack in the ceiling looked familiar, but I could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there when I went to sleep. As I stared up at the ceiling, wondering how I could see that far without my glasses, my eyes fell on a hand-painted mobile of the solar system hanging by the window, and I realized with a start that I was in my childhood bedroom, in our house in Leipzig.

  My head rested on a plump, goose-down pillow. I rubbed the sheet, crisp with starch, between my fingers. When I brought it up to my face, I breathed in the smell of the laundry soap my mother used. Mutti had always starched our sheets, because she said she didn’t sleep well on anything less. When I was a bit older, I learned to sleep anywhere, on anything, and starch was the least of my worries. Now the sheet’s coolness felt good against my skin. I put my arms outside the covers, on my red-and-blue plaid duvet. Remarkably, my brain had stored every detail of a room I hadn’t seen in more than eighty years.

  I sat up and swung my legs, which felt taut and muscular, out from beneath the covers, and the simple action was easy and painless. The hands before me that clenched and unclenched on my command looked like they belonged to someone else. I turned both palms up and stared at my inner arm, where the tattoo should have been. I probed the spot with my fingers, trying to find the numbers under my skin.

  When I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror over the bureau, I stared back at a young man in his early twenties. Moving closer, I ran my hand through my hair and over the stubble on my chin. I’d never looked this good, even when I really was young. This guy, with his broad shoulders and trim waistline, was wearing my boxers and undershirt, and it was curiosity, rather than vanity, that led me to inspect him from all sides. It was like I’d borrowed a body from someone close to me, a nephew, or a son. Whoever he was, he was a handsome devil.

  That’s when I noticed that the picture books, toys, and mementos of my childhood were missing. Instead of my satchel and pencil box, there was a thick stack of university-level textbooks on my desk—calculus, physics, chemistry—and some German-language novels piled on the nightstand. Though it had been more than seventy years since I’d read anything in German, when I flipped through the books, I was able to understand everything on the pages.

  A young man’s personal possessions rested in the wooden tray on the bureau. In place of my jar of marbles and kite string, I found a signet ring, a fountain pen, a pocket watch—and Mira’s heart-shaped locket, on its frayed red silk cord. I hung it around my neck and smiled at the sentimentality of placing her heart so close to mine.

  At the window, I leaned out, hands on the sill, and took a deep breath, savoring the purity of the air and the warmth of the sun on my skin. The clipped lawn was too vibrantly green to be believed, and the low branch of Mira’s apple tree still leaned on the garden wall. No one should be inside on such a beautiful day, and I was itching to go enjoy the weather.

  But even if it was a dream, I wasn’t going outside in my underwear. I flung open the wardrobe and, to my delight, found it full of clothes. Not little knee breeches and jumpers, but the kind of things a young man would have worn in my day. I dressed in a wide-legged pair of cuffed trousers, a sport shirt, and a leather belt. Spectator shoes, too. My clothes felt crisp and new and were the nicest ones I’d ever worn. The young man in the mirror h
eld his head high. He knew none of the weight of my suffering—and carried no regret over the things I had failed to do.

  Down in the garden, things I hadn’t remembered until now were nonetheless there, like a marble statue my mother had placed among the flowering plants and my metal toy airplane, which was stuck high on a branch of the apple tree.

  Though nothing was out of place, exactly, my father’s workshop shed at the back of the garden was freshly painted. The window I’d accidentally cracked with an errantly thrown pebble was good as new. Were these anomalies significant? Some imperfections, like the broken window, erased, while the toy airplane remained abandoned on the tree bough?

  With little effort, I climbed the apple tree to inspect the indentation where Mira and I had left trinkets for each other, but the fairy post office was empty. Perfect red apples hung within easy reach, so I picked one and polished it on my shirt. My teeth cut through the skin in the first luscious bite, and as I took another, juice ran down my chin. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, aware of the dampness and the prickle of my day’s growth of stubble. My mind denied the truth of these sensations, whispering that it wasn’t—it couldn’t—be real.

  Was this sanitized version of my lost childhood home some kind of one-day pass to heaven?

  My appetites and curiosity swelled, and I experienced all kinds of wants with frightening ferocity. I wanted to be this young man. I wanted to inhabit this world and live his life. I wanted my family, and Mira. Where were the people who should have been here to greet me?

  “Mutti? Vati?” My voice echoed across the manicured lawns. As I dashed back into the kitchen, I let the screen door slam behind me as I used to when I was a boy. The larder and the icebox were full of food, and a coffee mug rested in the drainboard. In the cabinets, the dishes and pots and pans were stacked neatly in place.

  Perhaps my mother was down the street chatting with a neighbor, and my father—yes, my father had probably left to catch an early trolley to do some writing before his first lecture at the university. Because this was the life I should have had, wasn’t it?

  Upstairs in my parents’ bedroom, my father’s suits hung on his side of their wardrobe, his shirts starched and folded in a drawer. On the shelf above, his hats rested beside the leather satchel he carried to work, which had always bulged with his students’ papers and a copy of the newspaper.

  His personal possessions fascinated me—even the half-empty pack of cigarettes and book of matches on his bureau. I had to touch everything in his shaving kit: the brush, the china mug, and the straight razor with the leather strap. When I opened the jar of pomade and ran a dab through my hair, the scent was so exactly as I recalled that it brought tears to my eyes.

  The tiepins, cuff links, and garters for his socks were of a bygone era, things I had never owned. Never needed. Never wanted until now.

  I would not have gone through my mother’s bureau drawers even in my wildest dream—which this likely was. Instead, I picked up and examined her favorite brooch and the silk scarf that lay on her dressing table. When I opened a metal tube of lipstick and spiraled it upward, I recalled she used to wear that shade of burnt orange with an emerald green dress.

  Though my parents were not here, neither had they left. As I lingered in the doorway, I caught a whiff of my mother’s perfume. Perhaps I was not truly alone.

  ***

  Outside, I vaulted the fence into Mira’s garden with confidence and ease. My brain might be old and confused, but my youthful body understood what it was doing. I ducked beneath the spread branches of the apple tree and tried the Schlosses’ back door. When I found it locked, I knocked, and when no one answered, I pounded on it to vent my frustration.

  With my hands cupped around my face at the window, I could see Mira’s music stand in the garden room, and past that into the kitchen. Perhaps her family hadn’t come down to breakfast yet. I scooped up pebbles from the flowerbed and tossed one at Mira’s windows, waiting in vain for her to raise a sash and lean out to greet me.

  “Hey!” I shouted to no one in particular. “Where is everyone? I want my parents. I want to see Mira.”

  I dropped the pebbles and closed my hand over her locket, squeezing my eyes shut and wishing on it as though it had mystical powers. But nothing changed. I was still alone, and lonelier than I’d ever been since I quit caring about whether I was lonely or not.

  Maybe this wasn’t heaven after all.

  The silence was so loud that my heartbeat filled my ears. No mothers called to their children, no dogs barked, no horses clip-clopped while drawing peddler’s carts, no automobiles rumbled past. The only sounds were ones I made myself. I scratched the toe of my shoe against the pebbles on the garden path and listened to them ricochet off each other like a kid’s game of marbles. When I cracked my knuckles, they made a pop as loud as a pistol’s report.

  My mother used to say, “Better to be alone than in bad company,” but after so many years of living a solitary life, I wanted noise. I wanted disturbance. I wanted to shout until someone, anyone, called out in response—even if it was to tell me to shut up, already. Covering my ears couldn’t erase the void.

  If only Mira were here to play for me.

  ***

  We were six years old when Mira began studying violin. I waited outside during her practice time, wincing as she screeched her way through a simple folk melody, “Muss I Denn.” After she’d worked on it for a week or two, it sounded much better, and I hummed along until the song seemed to underscore my daily tasks. The lyrics were very much like the promises Mira and I would later make to each other before we parted.

  When I’m back, when I’m back,

  When I finally return, finally return,

  I’ll come straight to thee, I swear.

  Though I can’t be always by thy side,

  full of joy I’ll think of thee.

  When I’m back, when I’m back,

  When I finally return, finally return,

  I shall come home straight to thee.

  Inspired by the way Mira took to her music lessons, my mother rented a piano and engaged a teacher for me. I had no desire to study music, but I did not wish to disappoint my mother by giving voice to my objection. I was as clumsy as Mira had been at first, but I failed to improve. After weeks of watching me fidget through my lessons and my halfhearted efforts to practice, my mother realized that forcing me to continue was a waste of time and money.

  Even when Mutti admitted defeat and called me hopeless, she was not angry. She tousled my hair with a smile and turned me loose to my preferred outdoor pursuits.

  As we grew older, Mira found a refuge from the hard times in her music. Maybe my life would have been different if I’d had something like that to cling to during my darkest days.

  ***

  Though I could’ve sworn my mother had sent the piano back, it was there, in the sitting room, when I reentered the house. With a twinge of regret for missed opportunities, I pulled out the stool, opened the cover, and pressed a key. The note pleased my ear and filled up the silence, so I sat and amused myself by trying to pick out the tune of “Muss I Denn.” To my great surprise, my fingers seemed to understand what to do, and I coaxed the melody out of the instrument with little effort.

  Once the top line flowed like second nature, I brought my left hand up to the keys and added a few chords. Not half bad. I wished my mother could hear me now. By lunchtime, I had mastered the piece and could play it flawlessly. This unexpected accomplishment would have been more fun if someone had been there to listen.

  Again, I struck a single note, listening to the reverberation that emanated from the string. I couldn’t really be the only one here. I just hadn’t looked hard enough. Perhaps I should explore farther than my own backyard.

  As I set off toward the shop-lined street in our neighborhood where I’d often gone with my mother, the
rhythm of my shoes striking the cobblestones echoed off the buildings. At every turn, flowers overflowed from window boxes on freshly painted half-timber houses.

  Every vista looked like a picture postcard, but instead of taking in the beauty, suspicion rose in my chest. This perfection felt too much like the Verschönerung at Theresienstadt.

  I scoured the area for a stray leaf, a dead blossom, or a gum wrapper, and relief flooded over me when I rounded a corner and spotted a bicycle lying against the curb in front of the bookshop. Finally, something was out of place—like it had been touched by a human. Whose bicycle was it? How long had it been there? I ran over and tried the bookshop’s door, but it was locked, and the store was dark inside.

  “Hello? Is there anyone here?” I pounded on the door.

  My joy at finding everything as I’d remembered it faded. I already knew there was little happiness to be found in a solitary existence—and in my dream, the solitude was unbearable. I should be surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors. Why dangle the illusion of this life in front of me and then pull it away? I clawed inside my shirt and clutched the locket’s red cord. “Mira!” My voice broke as it echoed across the square. “Mira, where are you?”

  There was no answering call.

  On the bicycle, I could explore beyond my neighborhood. I picked it up and swung one leg over.

  ***

  I spent the afternoon searching every street in our district for signs of another human. Even when I ventured into the rolling hills outside the city, it was the same—as if frozen in time, void of any living thing, save vegetation. I thought I was done being angry about things I couldn’t change, but the younger version of me was hot-blooded. It was his rage that flooded through me until my brain was like an inferno roiling with questions.

  What had I done to deserve this kind of torture? Why was this place being shown to me now? Was I missing some sort of message? Was I dying?

  By the time I coasted into the alley behind my house, I’d reached a decision. If being here meant being alone, I wanted out. I dropped the bicycle and shouted at the skies.