The Living and the Lost

by Ellen Feldman

  “My family.”

  “I take it there are few if any Pinskys in Friendship, Indiana.”

  “When I told my mother about him, she wrote back asking what kind of a name was Pinsky. My father thought it sounded Jewish, but she told him it couldn’t be. Our Mary Jo would never do that to us was the way she put it.”

  “So are you going to do that to them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does Dr. Pinsky say? I can’t go on calling him Dr. Pinsky. What’s his first name?”

  “Phil. Philip. Isn’t that lovely. He says it means lover of horses.”

  “What does Lover-of-Horses have to say?”

  Mary Jo dropped her eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t had the nerve to tell him. I don’t want him to think my family is…” Her voice drifted off.

  “Anti-Semitic?”

  “They’re not. Not really.” She looked at Millie pleadingly. “What do you think I should do?”

  “I don’t know, but I do know one thing. When you get around to telling Phil, he isn’t going to be surprised.”

  Mary Jo was the one who looked surprised. “You think he knew all along how they’d feel?”

  “I’d put money on the fact that he’s been fighting this battle all his life.”

  A German waitress in a pale blue uniform with a white apron came to take away their plates, then returned with the check. “Look on the bright side,” Millie went on as they put their American money on the table. “You wanted to see the world.”

  “That’s what my mother’s going to say,” Mary Jo answered as they stood. “And she’ll remind me she always predicted it would end in disaster.”

  Nineteen

  At first she thought she was dreaming the banging on the door. It had never happened to her, but she’d heard enough stories from others to have it seared into her unconscious. Fists hammering in the middle of the night. Doors being broken in at dawn. Catch them when they’re home. Get them in their nightclothes. Round them up when they’re most vulnerable. Even when they were dressed, packed, and waiting, having been informed of the day and even the hour, the brutes liked to bash their way in, shouting and smashing and using their rifles to prod grandmothers and three year olds and everyone between. But this was no dream. She was fully awake, and the pounding on the door was still going on.

  She swung her feet to the floor, grabbed her robe, and started down the hall. The door was vibrating from the blows. She pulled it open.

  Three men stood on the landing, David in the center with his arms around the shoulders of the other two, propped up by the other two. She didn’t recognize the man on the right, but Harry Sutton was on the left. David hung between them, his head down, his hair falling over his eyes, his tie looped around one leg, a dark stain on the front of his trousers. In the dim light of the outside landing she couldn’t tell if it was vomit or urine.

  “It must have been some party,” she said, then turned to Harry. “Somehow I expected better of you.”

  “Would you have preferred we left him for the MPs to bring home? Which way to his bedroom?”

  She stepped aside and pointed down the hall. “Past the parlor and kitchen,” she said. “The door on the right.”

  Still propping him up between them, they started down the hall. He wasn’t so much moving his feet as letting them drag behind him. That was when she saw it. The toes of his shoes were spreading the trail. It wasn’t vomit or urine. She switched on the light to make sure. It was blood. And his tie wasn’t hanging from his leg. It was tied tightly, like a tourniquet.

  She caught up with them. “What happened?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Harry said as they maneuvered David through the door to his room. “Do you have a scissors?”

  “Why?”

  “For Christ sake, Millie, just get the scissors!”

  She went to the kitchen, rattled through a drawer, and carried the scissors back to the bedroom. They’d managed to get David onto the bed. He was muttering curses under his breath; and the other man was murmuring to him to take it easy, breathe deep, just take it easy; and Harry was grabbing the scissors from her. Starting at the ankle, he cut a line up David’s trouser leg to the point where the tie was cinched, then peeled back the fabric. The entire thigh was covered with blood.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Harry said.

  “He’s right, Mil,” David gasped.

  “We need a doctor.” She wasn’t shouting, but she came close. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

  “No hospital,” David muttered. “Too many other people.”

  “There’s a doctor on the way,” Harry said. “Stopping at the hospital first to get what’s necessary.”

  “What’s necessary for what?” Now she was shouting. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”

  “To remove the bullet,” Harry said. “It’s just a flesh wound. It didn’t hit bone or anything.”

  She whirled on him. “Where did you get your medical training, Major?”

  “He’s right,” the other man said without looking up. He was too busy tightening the tie around David’s thigh.

  This time David’s gasp was sharper.

  “Sorry, old buddy, but it has to be tight to do any good.”

  “And before you ask Sergeant Roth where he got his medical training,” Harry said over the knocking on the door to the flat, “he was a medic in the war.”

  He left the room and was back in a moment with a man in an Army uniform carrying a black leather doctor’s bag.

  She was never able to put the events of the next hour, or was it longer, in any kind of sequence. The smell of alcohol and the glint of the light from the bedside lamp bouncing off the forceps; the whiteness of the gauze against the red blood; David’s eyes wide with pain in his dirt-smeared face as the doctor bent over him; his sharp intake of breath and the sound of metal against metal as the bullet dropped into the bowl. Then the sergeant was winding a bandage, and the doctor was snapping closed his bag, and Harry was following him out of the room. She caught up with them in the hall and started firing questions at the doctor.

  “He’s going to be fine,” the doctor said. “He’ll barely have a scar. I gave him something to sleep now. He’ll be up and around before you know it.”

  “You don’t have to write this up, do you, doc?” Harry asked as he walked the doctor to the door.

  “Write what up?” the doctor answered. Then he and the sergeant were gone, and she and Harry were standing face-to-face in front of the closed door.

  “Somehow I expected better of you,” she said again. “I’m not sure why, but I did.”

  “Better than what?”

  “Whatever happened tonight.”

  “What do you think happened tonight?”

  “Whatever it was, I’m pretty sure it involved Frauleins and something else illegal or you wouldn’t have asked the doctor not to report it.”

  He shook his head and grinned, but he wasn’t smiling. “Talk about jumping to conclusions. Maybe you and Wallach deserve each other.”

  “What am I supposed to think?” she said, but he was already on his way to the parlor.

  “I’ll tell you if you give me a chance, but do you mind if I sit down while I do it? It’s been one bloody hell of a night.”

  She followed him. He sat on the sofa, leaned back, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, then put them on again.

  She was still standing.

  “You’re right about one thing,” he said. “What went on tonight was illegal, but not in the way you think. Tonight, and all those nights you thought David was out romancing Frauleins, he wasn’t, though I suppose there was some romance involved. There always is with cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

  “Is this your idea of explaining things?”

  “David is part of a network of Jewish GIs. They weren’t happy with all the bureaucratic red tape and international squabbling. The Brits are determined
to stop illegal immigration to Palestine. The French are more sympathetic but have no money. The Russkies, on the other hand, are eager to get rid of as many Jewish DPs as possible, both in their sector and on the Polish side of the border. And with the threat of repatriation of more Polish DPs, the Jews are desperate to get out of Europe. Talk about euphemisms. The Occupation calls it repatriation. The Polish government says it’s harassment of the Polish people. That’s the term they use when Jews try to reclaim stolen property. The penalty is a fine of twenty thousand zloty to be paid in ten days—under threat of execution. Not to mention the less official pogroms that are beginning to break out again. So David and the sergeant who was here tonight and a handful of other men set up a smuggling ring.”

  “I don’t understand how smuggling cigarettes is going to save Polish Jews.”

  “They’re not smuggling cigarettes. They’re using the cigarettes to bribe the guards. Three hundred cartons per trip. Every few nights several ‘liberated’ army trucks filled with siphoned gas leave Berlin for Stettin in the Soviet zone. By the time they arrive there six or seven hours later, a few hundred or more Jews are lined up on both sides of the German-Polish border. Then all hell breaks loose. Jews rush the border. Guards collect their cigarettes. People pile into trucks. Each one is supposed to carry fifty people. Twice that number usually manage to crowd in.”

  “I still don’t understand how David got shot.”

  “Apparently tonight some guards who weren’t in on the deal showed up as the trucks were about to pull out. They started shooting. David was just swinging up into the driver’s cab.”

  “You saw all this?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not part of the operation, but the men who run it keep some of us more or less informed so we can cover their backs in cases like this. When word does leak up to the brass, it’s our job to persuade them that a controlled flow of refugees through the American zone and on to Italy and Palestine is preferable to the chaos of thousands of DPs trying to get there on their own.”

  “That still doesn’t explain those Frauleins he was with that night after the film.”

  “For Christ sake, Millie, you have Frauleins on the brain. Maybe they were Poles he met on one of his smuggling ventures. Not every girl with blond hair is German.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t my place to.”

  “Why didn’t David?”

  He stood. “I think that’s something you should ask him.” He started for the door. “Or better still, yourself.”

  * * *

  She was sitting beside his bed when he opened his eyes the next morning.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “One more thing to blame yourself for? You didn’t fire the gun, Mil. And before you start beating your breast in mea culpas, don’t you want to ask how I feel?”

  “I’m sorry. Again. How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Hungry.”

  “Are you allowed to eat?”

  “It’s a flesh wound. No damage to body organs. I can eat. I can drink. I can smoke. I can still get up to the trouble you were sure I was getting into nightly.”

  “I never should have doubted you.”

  “Let’s just say you tend to be a little hard on people. But not nearly as hard as you are on yourself.”

  She stood and asked him what he wanted for breakfast.

  “Whatever you’re making, and lots of it.”

  Twenty

  He wasn’t sprawled with his feet on the desk or even leaning back in the swivel chair. He was hunched over with his head resting on his hand studying what looked like photographs. She knocked on the open door. He looked up at the sound and, when he saw her, pulled open the center drawer and swept the pictures or whatever they were into it.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.

  “You’re not,” he answered as he closed the drawer.

  “I just wanted to thank you again. For last night.”

  “You’re welcome. But for the record, it’s not again. You never thanked me last night.”

  “I’m sorry. I was distraught.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “But I am grateful.”

  “Think nothing of it. Taking care of Mosbach medical emergencies has become part of the job. Who knows? If I play my cards right, it may even boost me up a notch in pay grade.”

  She managed a smile.

  “How’s David?”

  “Fine. Back at work in a few days. For all I know he’ll be making those night drives to Stettin again too, but he’s still playing his cards pretty close to his vest about that.”

  “He has to. He’s not the only one involved.”

  “Gee, I didn’t know that.”

  “I thought you came in here to thank me.”

  “I did, but it’s hard to thank a man who’s so damn patronizing.”

  He smiled. “So I’ve occasionally been told.”

  She was surprised. “You mean I’m not the only one?”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  Damn him. “Of course I am, Major. I was hoping for a special place in your heart.”

  She started to leave, then turned toward him again. “And now you can go back to those top secret photographs you shoved into the drawer when you saw me.”

  The smile slid from his face.

  “That was supposed to be a joke,” she said, but on the way back to her office she remembered the photo of Dachau that the German interrogee had insisted was a picture of Dresden. Whatever he’d been looking at was either highly classified or even grimmer than those photographs of camp dead, though she couldn’t imagine anything could be grimmer than that.

  * * *

  A few days later he walked into her office carrying what looked like several photographs, but she was more surprised by his presence than what was in his hand. Except for the instance when he’d brought the Persil letter from Anna, he usually sent Fraulein Schmidt or Weber to summon her to his office. He closed the door behind him, stood for a moment looking uncomfortable, then sat in the chair on the other side of her desk.

  “How are things going in your neck of the denazification woods?”

  The question made her wary. He hadn’t come to her office and closed the door behind him to ask her how things were going.

  “Fine.”

  “No one giving you trouble?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “I did tell you about that buzzer in the well of your desk. The one that rings in the guard room.”

  “You told me the first morning I came to work.”

  “Just wanted to make sure.”

  He looked at the photographs he was still holding, though they were facedown, and he couldn’t see them any more than she could. Then he unbuttoned the breast pocket of his uniform jacket, slid them in, and buttoned the pocket.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Do you remember that day we went to the center where they store the Nazi Party records?”

  “I’m not likely to forget it. It made my blood run cold. But it led to Elke.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “Fine. Or at least as well as can be expected.”

  He started to unbutton his pocket again, then changed his mind. She’d never seen him so nervous.

  “You asked that day if all the Kraut records were as good as the ones for party membership.” He hesitated.

  “And you told me never to go into intelligence work.”

  He tried for a smile but didn’t quite make it.

  “And you were probably right,” she went on, “because I seem to be having quite a time getting whatever you came in here for out of you.”

  “That’s because I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.”

  “I won’t know unless you tell me what it is.”

  “An old buddy of mine has a pretty nasty assignment.”

  “Is there any other kind in this Occupation?”
>
  “This is worse than most.” He hesitated again. “Concentration camp records.”

  The sound of her own intake of breath startled her.

  “He found my mother,” he went on. “He even found my father, though I didn’t need that. I knew it before I left. My mother lasted until ’42.”

  “I’m sorry.” The inadequacy of the words made her feel worse every time she uttered them.

  “I asked him to keep an eye out for some other names. Uncles, aunts, cousins.” He hesitated again. “And Mosbach.”

  Once more the sharp intake of breath didn’t seem to come from her.

  “I hope you don’t mind.”

  It took her what felt like forever to get the words out. “I’m grateful.”

  His hand went to his pocket again. She watched his fingers undo the button. He took out the photographs. She didn’t understand. She wanted to know, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to see. No, she was sure. She couldn’t face that.

  He leaned across the desk and held them out to her. “I could have asked him just to write down the information, but I had a feeling you’d want to see the actual entries. These are photos of them.”

  She sat looking at him, paralyzed. She’d wanted to know. She had to know. But suddenly on the verge of knowing, she wasn’t so sure. As long as she didn’t have certainty, she had hope. More than hope. Stolen moments.

  She remembered an autumn dusk at school. It must have been six or seven months after the letter from her father arrived. She’d been heading one way through Pembroke Arch, and a man had been coming toward her from the other direction. The arch was dim even on sunny days. Now it was shrouded in shadows. But she didn’t need light to make out the form. She recognized the tilt of head under the fedora, the forward thrust of body, and the quick impatient step. It would be just like him to surprise her. She began to run to meet him. She was almost upon him when a girl burst out of Pembroke West and threw her arms around the man. “Daddy,” she cried.

  Harry was still leaning toward her holding out the photographs. Somehow she managed to lift her arm to take them from him.