by Rebekah Pace
I stared at her for a moment, expecting her to disappear. But she didn’t.
“Like this one.” She pointed. “We were five, almost too young to remember, but Mutti told me the story of the day we moved in so many times.”
The photo was of us standing by the garden wall. “I remember it all perfectly. Your family came in a taxi. You left a sugar cube on the windowsill for the stork before we went out to play. I thought you were the most beautiful little girl in the world.”
“You, my dear friend, are very biased.” She smiled as she caressed my cheek, then looked back at the album. “I treasure photographs so. When I look at us together when we were children, it’s as though no time has passed at all.”
Her mother had arranged the photos on the black pages with little triangle-shaped holders at the corners. My gaze lingered on one of our mothers and Mr. Schloss. My father was behind the camera. Their young smiling faces only saddened me.
This was all that remained of our parents. I couldn’t pretend that their lives didn’t end in tragedy. Though Mira was right beside me, I felt so alone that I had to leave the room to hide my tears.
13
Of the estimated 1.3 million people deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, approximately 1.1 million died there. Auschwitz, though among the worst, was just one of around 15,000 concentration camps in occupied Europe. The idea that civilians did not learn what was happening at the concentration camps until after the war was a lie. Other world leaders knew of the camps, too—including President Roosevelt, but he claimed he did not believe the United States should intervene in the domestic affairs of another country. On the international stage, winning the war took priority over rescuing those of us being held in bondage.
When the Russians arrived to liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, the soldiers were unprepared for what they found—a stinking slice of hell populated by living skeletons. So many of them cried when they saw us. Then they gave us little bits of chocolate and cookies, the kinds of treats we hadn’t had in months or, for some of us, years. They treated the younger inmates like little brothers and sisters and gave us hugs. Their doctors administered medical treatment, and they fed us small amounts of food until we could handle more. But the Allies didn’t know what to do with us—so they contained us again.
Some of the liberated who were brave enough to venture forth left the camp and began walking wherever they chose, but that was dangerous, with the war still going on. I was among a group loaded on a Red Cross train. We rode in a real passenger car with seats and windows that carried us to a displaced persons camp outside Leipzig. Relief workers set up housing for us in a school and some apartment buildings. Though I no longer feared dying at the hands of the Nazis, I was still behind barbed wire, with guards at the perimeter. Food was still inadequate, but at least we were no longer treated cruelly.
Some of the children had not been called by their names for so long, they had to be taught to respond to them, as well as to simple pleasantries like “Good morning.” Together, survivors and relief workers reestablished religious services and cultural, educational, and social programs, and tried to make our daily routine resemble what we’d had before the war. Slowly, we came back to life.
Though I could have attended secular school in the DP camp, I was sixteen and I hadn’t seen a book in over a year. School sounded like a waste of time, and so did the religious classes that were offered at yeshiva. My thirteenth birthday had come and gone without me becoming a bar mitzvah, but after what I’d been through, I had no doubt I was a man. I was too old to sit in class with little boys of ten.
My future might have taken a different course if my parents had been there to encourage me after the war. Without their guidance, I seemed as unlikely to attend university as I was to fly to the moon. I enrolled in a vocational course and learned to be a plumber, deciding it was as good a trade as any. I didn’t realize I would end up being one for sixty years.
After all, I was nothing special. Thousands of other young men like me had been orphaned and displaced by the war. I saw no point in complaining or talking about what I’d been through. No one was handing out medals for living day to day.
Other survivors might have felt differently. Maybe they believed their survival and future successes would redeem the lives of their lost loved ones. But I wasn’t like them. There was no fire inside me. I felt no responsibility to do great things on behalf of those who would never have the chance. All I felt was lost and alone.
In the DP camps, we were supposed to work to find a permanent home. With many of the great cities of Europe in ruins, New York and Palestine were considered the best places to build a bright future. Both were tough tickets. Though the refugee situation in Europe was dire, the United States did not increase immigration quotas above what they had been in years past, and the British restricted immigration to Palestine.
Relief organizations helped feed us, but their task was overwhelming, and food often ran short. Young people, especially, grew frustrated waiting for travel visas. The young men who weren’t afraid to trade on the black market got better food, clothes, and cigarettes. They were also the ones who got the girls.
The privations and horror of the war years had hardened many of those young women, and just like the guys, they were bursting at the seams to be on their own. The boldest of them frightened me. There was nothing soft or flirty about them, and they pushed and demanded and henpecked even the men they were trying to attract.
No way was I ambitious enough to date one of those girls. Without Mira, I wasn’t interested in anything, not even myself. I expended the least amount of energy and functioned at the lowest level. I wasn’t even excited when my visa was approved. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to have ambition or plans.
I hadn’t pushed to go to America. I was so used to hiding that I couldn’t draw attention to myself to ask for anything. Without the unexpected sponsor in America who came forward to claim me, I cannot imagine where I would have gone.
And then there was my promise to Mira, which I had not forgotten. When we’d agreed to meet at home at the war’s end, I had imagined a joyous reunion. After just three months in Auschwitz, I saw how few survived, but still I clung to the hope that she had also lived. Every week, I read the survivor lists in the newspaper and listened to radio programs for bulletins about people searching for missing loved ones. I wrote to some of the German families in our old neighborhood hoping they’d survived the air raids and had come back home. I asked for news—especially news of Mira—but received no replies.
And was there anything to return home to? Since late 1943, the Allies had bombed Leipzig on multiple occasions, and most of the city, including the southern suburbs where we had lived, lay in ruins. Though I was only a two or three days’ walk from home, I found excuses not to go. I convinced myself it was too risky to leave the safety of the DP camp, but in truth, I couldn’t face my growing fear that Mira was gone forever.
***
I woke up in my apartment with a young man’s appetite, craving a Reuben sandwich so badly that it was the only thing that would do for lunch. I remembered they made a great one at a place about ten blocks away, so I double-checked to make sure I had my wallet and headed out just before eleven.
I got turned around once or twice on the walk over, and when I arrived, I found the windows boarded over and a “For Rent” sign on the door. Maybe it was on a different block. I wandered around for a while, but there was no restaurant nearby. When I ended up back where I started, I decided they must have moved, and I had forgotten. In the pawnshop next door, I asked the guy behind the counter, “Are you knowing what has happened to the deli?”
“What deli?” The guy was no spring chicken, so he should remember.
“The one that was being next door.” I pointed. “They are making a great Reuben.”
The man shrugged. “I been here t
wenty years and there ain’t never been no deli.”
“You are certain?”
“I’m sure, man. That was a print shop for as long as I been here.”
“Maybe I am thinking of the wrong block. Sorry to bother you.” When I left the pawnshop, I figured I’d go one or two more blocks farther before turning back. As I stepped into the street, a blaring horn made me stumble backward, and I caught my heel on the edge of the curb.
As I fell, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. My hands grabbed empty air. I had time to think about Mira, about what this fall would do to my aging body, and about where the hell that restaurant had gone to before I felt my head strike the pavement and everything went black.
14
When I opened my eyes, Mira and I were strolling through our neighborhood. She was wearing a flowered yellow dress, her hair tied back with a matching ribbon. It made me think of a song that probably hadn’t been written yet, so I didn’t bring it up.
“I always loved that house.” She pointed at a large two-story home with half-timbered gables, and we slowed so she could bury her nose in the honeysuckle that grew near the front walk. “It seems lonely, don’t you think?”
“Every house in this district but yours and mine are empty. They’re all lonely.”
“Which one do you like?”
“I never thought about it.”
When we arrived at the trolley stop, a car was waiting. We stepped aboard and took seats, and though there was no driver present, the trolley started and rolled past the industrial district that lay between our neighborhood and the city center.
Mira asked, “Do you remember going into the city like this with our mothers?”
“Yes. I loved taking the trolley. When I was five, my dearest ambition was to be a trolley conductor.”
She giggled. “A lofty goal.”
“I certainly thought so at the time.”
The trolley car stopped in front of the zoological garden’s entrance, where the gate stood open to invite us inside.
“Do you remember going to the zoo?”
“Tell me.” I remembered very well, but I wondered if she would remember something I did not. We wandered through the park, where, though it was devoid of animals, the landscaping and the flowers still made for a lovely stroll.
Mira viewed the empty cages and enclosures a bit wistfully. “Oh, once there were so many animals—the big cats and the elephants, bears, monkeys, penguins. You liked the tigers best.”
“What about you?”
“I cried because the elephant looked big enough to smash through his barrier and escape. The animal kindergarten was my favorite.”
“The what?”
“I can’t believe you don’t remember. They had a petting zoo for the baby animals. You fed one of the tiger cubs out of a bottle. We only came here together once. That was the summer they changed the laws.” She was silent for a moment. “It’s a gift, to experience the life our families wanted for us here. When I was young, I wanted to travel, but I didn’t expect to settle down and live anywhere but here, at home.”
“What about the sad times?”
“I don’t remember the sad times.”
“How can you not remember people holding their noses as we passed and calling us dirty Jews? They spit on us. We had to walk in the gutter.”
“But none of that matters now.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
She was silent for a long time, as though searching for how to say what she was thinking. “But everything’s perfect now. Our time together can be anything we want it to be—you can be anything you want to be. If nothing bad had happened when we were young, what would you have done with your life?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do! You would have become a pioneer in broadcasting.”
“I was too young to know what I wanted then—except you. I always wanted to be with you.”
“You had to want more than just me. If I wasn’t here, would it be the worst thing in the world?”
I reached over and took her hand. “You have no idea.” I was not the kind of man Mira or my parents—or I—had expected I would turn out to be.
“Peter, it’s safe to say things are not always as you perceive them. You’ve been treating me as if I’m made of glass. You seem surprised when I react to what happened to us in a way you don’t understand. Don’t you believe I can think for myself?” Before I could respond she startled me with a harsh laugh. “What if this isn’t your dream at all? Don’t dwell on the past, Peter. In fact, don’t think at all. While you’re at it, please stop assuming you know what I’m thinking and let me come down off my pedestal.”
I was too stunned by her outburst to answer. I was the one who was experiencing a lucid dream. I was in control—wasn’t I?
As we left the zoo, I noticed two bicycles parked near the entrance that had not been there when we arrived. By now, I knew to take the hint. “Would you like to bicycle over and have lunch at the market?”
“Yes. That would be nice.” If she was still frustrated with me, she didn’t let on.
At Augustusplatz, in the city center, the market stalls were full of produce, textiles, and crafts, but the vendors were nowhere in sight. Mira wandered up and down the rows, basket on her arm, selecting food for a picnic lunch. Our footsteps echoed off the buildings as we crossed the cobblestone plaza to a bistro table topped by a red umbrella, where we spread our lunch and ate with a view of the Gewandhaus concert hall. That gave me an idea, and I took her hand. “You made me learn how to dance. Now I’ll pick something for you to do. I think you should play a concert on a real stage.”
“A concert for one?”
“Sure. Who wants to hear you play more than I do?”
At that she smiled, and as we went back to eating, I could tell she was thinking about what selections to include on the program.
On this public square, I missed the sounds of other people almost as much as I had when I’d been in the dream alone. I longed for the sight of ordinary things, like children playing, old men engrossed in a chess game, and women shopping at the stalls. Then a flicker of movement caught my eye, and I turned in time to see a curtain fall closed in a shop window. I got up so fast I knocked over my chair and dashed across the square. I could hear her calling behind me.
“Peter? What’s the matter?”
There was no time to answer. Keeping my eyes trained on that window, I watched for more proof that he was here. I don’t know what I was planning to do if I found him. Ask him to get lost?
The shop door rattled in its frame as I rammed my shoulder against it but did not yield. I looked around, grabbed a rock out of a flowerbed, and raised it to throw through the window beside the door.
Mira shouted my name again. Before I could decide whether to break the window or turn back to her, a gale of wind slammed me against the building so hard I saw stars. I sagged against the wall, rubbing my head. In those few moments, the sky darkened to grayish-yellow and daylight turned to dusk. Storm clouds rolled in ominously fast, and another strong gust of wind sent bistro chairs skittering across the cobblestones.
Staggering out of the shelter of the building, I held up my arm to ward off the dust and debris that swirled through the square. Mira was nowhere in sight. When I shouted her name, the force of the wind drove the words back down my throat. Our bicycles blew over with a clatter, and as lightning flashed, I spotted a glimpse of yellow on the ground, beneath a table. The rest of the square looked like an overexposed negative.
I ran to her, stepping over the scattered remains of our lunch. Her market basket blew away, and when I pulled her to her feet, the wind whipped her skirt. As we fought to stay standing, an updraft caught the umbrella on a nearby table.
“Look out!” The umbrella’s pole mi
ssed her by inches as it took flight, and the table turned over with a crash. She covered her head and I bent my body over hers.
She clung to me. “I told you not to think!”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. As we ran for the shelter of the market house, the heavens opened, and rain fell as though someone had dumped it from the world’s largest bucket. We were soaked by the time we reached the entrance, but when I pulled at the doors, they would not yield.
She shivered as she pushed her dripping hair off her face. “How will we make it home in this?”
I took her arm, and as we rounded the corner in search of another entrance, another gust nearly blew us off our feet. She fell against me, and I righted her and pulled her into the next doorway, but that door was also locked. “We’ll have to wait it out here.” We huddled beneath the canvas awning, watching as more market umbrellas and bistro chairs blew across the square, scraping over the cobblestones and crashing into buildings. Trees bent double in the wind.
As the storm raged, the awning sagged lower under the rain that pooled in it. When it reached the tipping point, cold water gushed over the sides and doused us anew. Had my attempt to come face to face with Old Peter unleashed the wrath of the storm?
I muttered, “All right. I get it. This isn’t mine to control.” If Mira heard me, she didn’t react.
Right away the wind died down and the rain slackened. I raked back my hair. “Well that was something else, wasn’t it?”
She lifted the soaked hem of her skirt and tried to wipe the rain from her face. “Yes, it was. I guess the storm ruined our lunch.”
“It ruined the whole market.” I looked around. The stalls, decked so prettily just a short while ago, had all blown over. The produce and handicrafts were drenched and scattered across the square. “It must have been some kind of cyclone.”