The doorbell went again. He waited, his only movement a chew on a nail. It went a third time. He took a few deep breaths and told himself not to be so damn paranoid. He’d spent decades worrying about every knock at the door and every phone call. He didn’t want to go back to those dark days.
He opened the front door and saw an old man. Well, about the same age as him.
“Yes?” he said, but even as he spoke he felt weak and nauseous. The man in front of him had a familiar look about him. His memory was sprinting to catch up and failing badly.
“Mykhail,” the man said. And it wasn’t a question.
His throat jammed as if something had grabbed it. His eyes flitted to the man’s hands, fearful that they might hold something more dangerous than a letter. But they were empty. The man’s face, however, held something he wasn’t quite sure about.
Asher knew as soon as the door was opened. Time makes hair thin and gray or even absent, it turns skin saggy and sallow, but it does little to the structures underneath. Or the scars. And Asher didn’t take his eyes off the face of the man he hadn’t seen for over sixty years.
But the man who now preferred to be called Michael didn’t speak. Well, that was understandable after all this time.
“Mykhail,” he repeated. “It’s me, Asher.” As he spoke he felt a tear fall from the corner of his eye and wiped it away before holding a hand out.
The man who was really Mykhail pulled back slightly at the gesture, but Asher thought it was probably the shock. And eventually he did hold his hand out to meet Asher’s.
“It’s so good to see you, my friend,” Asher said, smiling.
Mykhail’s eyes were blinking, his lower jaw moving aimlessly. “Asher?” he said uncertainly. “But . . . Asher?” It looked like he was struggling to breathe. Then he looked Asher up and down. “Is it really you?”
“I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this,” Asher replied.
Mykhail looked like he was in some sort of trance, until a noisy motorcycle behind Asher broke the spell. He stood aside and said, “You’d . . . better come in.”
Ten minutes later, Asher and Mykhail sat themselves down in the sunroom with a cup of coffee each. Asher had recounted how he came across the photograph in the newspaper by complete fluke, and Mykhail had explained that for practical reasons he no longer went by the name Mykhail, and that being Michael Peterson just made life simpler.
Asher laughed. “You’ll always be Mykhail Petrenko to me, but I guess it is a bit of a mouthful for the average American. Asher Kogan isn’t so bad.”
“Okay, I’ll make an exception for you. You can call me Mykhail.”
“I’m not sure I could do anything else.”
“So . . .” Mykhail said, his face stiffening briefly. “A photo in the newspaper, you say? I remember that being taken.”
“I recognized you immediately and I couldn’t stop myself. Isn’t it an incredible coincidence?”
Mykhail nodded thoughtfully.
“After I read the article it just needed a little detective work. You know, I knocked on the door of this huge—”
“It’s all lies, you know.”
“Uh, what?”
Mykhail pulled his lips back, exposing a flash of yellow teeth. “The case against me. The newspaper story. It’s poppycock.”
“Oh, of course.”
“I have legal people working on the case—not that I really need them.”
Asher placed his cup down and clasped his hands as if in prayer. “Mykhail. We haven’t met for sixty years, but nobody changes that much, not inside, not the real person. You were a good kid, so you grew up to be a good man. It’s probably mistaken identity.”
“That’s exactly what my daughter says.”
“You have a family?”
Michael smiled awkwardly. “I have a daughter, Diane.”
“Oh, I see.”
“No, no. I’m not widowed. Jenny left me.”
Asher’s expression didn’t quite know what to do. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
“That’s okay. She’s history. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Diane stayed with her at first, then said she preferred living with me.”
“And she still lives with you?”
“She thought about moving out once or twice, but I don’t think she ever seriously wanted to. She’s happy here. I still think she needs me, although she’d never admit it.”
“It must be good having family?”
Mykhail took a sip of coffee. “Oh, I don’t know what I’d do without Diane. Well, yes, I do, but you don’t want to hear that. What about you, Asher? Are you married?”
Asher shook his head. “I had a circle of friends when I was younger, when I worked at Dearborn. I . . . uh . . . I had a difficult time a few years back. Now I like to keep life simple.” He laughed, and looked Mykhail up and down again. “I just can’t believe it. After all these years.”
Mykhail smiled and looked Asher in the eye. “I know. I never thought I’d see you again this side of heaven.”
“We have a lot of old times to talk about.”
Mykhail nodded. “If we can remember them.” He laughed. “Tell me, what are your plans for the next few days?”
“I just stopped the night in a hotel and . . .” Asher took a breath. “I was thinking we could talk about the old days. In Dyovsta.”
“Mmm . . . the old days.” Mykhail thought for a moment, then grinned. “Sure. Of course.”
“Good.”
Asher looked around the sunroom and glanced back into the living room. The wallpaper was clean and neat, there were photographs and ornaments evenly spaced on shelves and cabinets. It was such a contrast to Asher’s own house. “You keep the place nice,” he said.
“Well, Diane does. You got a place in . . . did you say Detroit?”
Asher nodded. “Nothing as nice as this. Little more than a shack, really.”
“Did you drive down here?”
“Bus. Last night. No need for a car most of the time. Like I said, I try to keep life simple.”
“Tell me about it. It’s this new technology that gets me. I’m happy as I am.”
Asher snickered. “You know, it seems after all these years you and me are still pretty much alike.”
“Like brothers.”
“Close brothers at that.” Asher’s face turned serious. “You know, I always wondered what happened to you after I left Dyovsta.”
“Yeah, well, I spent a lot of time thinking how you got on in Warsaw. It . . . it was Warsaw, wasn’t it?”
Asher nodded. “Sounds like we have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Like I say, I’ve half forgotten about those days, but . . . how long are you down here for?”
“Until you get bored of me, I guess. I don’t have commitments.”
“Why don’t you stay?”
“Seriously?”
“We have a spare room. Full of junk, but I think there’s a bed in there somewhere.”
“That’s . . . that’s very kind of you.”
“Like you say, we got a lot of catching up to do.”
“So, tell me,” Asher said, “what happened to you during the war? How did you end up here?”
“Well . . .” Mykhail gave his bald head a pensive rub. “No. You go first. I’m still in shock at opening my front door to find my oldest buddy standing there. Tell me what you’ve been up to these past sixty or so years.”
Asher shrugged. “As you wish.”
And so Asher talked about his difficult early years in Warsaw, about finding Izabella at Café Baran, about the horrible days in the ghetto, and about his days fighting with the resistance, which only ended, he said, when he was captured and sent to Treblinka.
At that point he stopped and gave his old friend a puzzled sideways stare. “Mykhail?” he said. “Are you okay?”
Mykhail breathed out long and hard, then nodded slowly.
“You don’t look okay. Do you want a glass
of water?”
“No,” Mykhail croaked. “I’m sorry. It’s just the mention of . . . that place.”
“Treblinka?”
Mykhail nodded. “I’ve never been there, you understand, but I’ve heard of the horrors.”
“Heard?” Asher shot out a short laugh. “If only you had been there, my friend. It was beyond horror. Thousands of bodies—probably hundreds of thousands. The innocents. Probably a few guilty ones too. But no human who ever lived deserved the—”
“Please. You can spare me the details. I’ve read up since then.”
Asher nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. Better not to dwell on the details.”
“Why not tell me what happened to you after the war?”
“Okay.” Asher drew breath and exhaled loudly. “Well, I was something of a lost soul. I went back to Warsaw, to Izabella, but . . .”
“She’d gone?”
“Mmm . . . let’s just say it didn’t quite work out.”
“I’m sorry, Asher.”
“You know, she said she wanted to marry me when the war was over.”
“Really? She told you that? Wasn’t that a little forward in those times?”
“Oh, she didn’t tell me. Rina told me. She said Izabella confided in her one day while they were alone together.”
“I can understand your disappointment.”
“I’m over it—by about fifty years.” He smiled sadly. “So I simply couldn’t stay there. And I knew there was nothing left for me in Dyovsta; I hadn’t been there since I was thirteen. So I settled in Kiev for a while—at least, I tried to. I went back to my old favorite, a job in a tractor factory. Oh, I had grand ambitions of starting a new life there, of kicking those demons and horrible memories out of my mind. But life was hard, and I never felt any sense of belonging; I hardly knew the city. The place was still recovering from being overrun by armies of various flavors. There had been so much destruction over too long a time. There were few opportunities and too many reminders of bad times.”
“So when did you come to the land of opportunity?”
“Oh, about two years after the end of the war, as I recall. I still had very few friends in Kiev, but I’d started reading a lot. I came across a story about a huge factory over here that was starting to manufacture tractors by the thousand and needed as much labor as America could supply and then some. And I still liked the idea of spending all my days dealing with the mechanics of those beasts. Also, America was on the other side of the world, so there would be no easy way back. I liked that. It cost every ruble I’d saved to get over here.”
“You’re talking about Dearborn, I’m guessing?”
Asher nodded. “My career never really took off as well as I thought it might. I wanted to become a professional engineer or scientist, but I think any drive I had was left behind in Warsaw. In any case, the simple life of a production line worker was enough for me. Well, it was enough until I got laid off in the 1970s.”
“What did you do then?”
“I survived. That’s all that matters. And now I pay my way, have a few friends, just one or two luxuries, and I manage to do a little charity work when I have the time.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“Oh, that’s a work in progress. When you’ve survived Treblinka, you should never be ungrateful, so I try not to be.” He took a long breath in and out. “So that’s me done,” he concluded. “Now, tell me about your journey here.”
Mykhail tried to compose himself, but didn’t speak for some time, instead blinking and breathing heavily.
“Mykhail? You’re trembling. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. You know, I think I will have that glass of water after all.”
“Of course, old friend. Where would I find a glass in this kitchen?”
A few minutes later, half the glass of water drunk, Mykhail started talking, slowly at first, but soon gaining momentum.
“There’s no way I can match your story,” he said. “Let me pitch that one out there first.”
“It’s not a competition.”
“Of course not. Well, as you might imagine, life on the farm continued as best we could manage after your family left. It was tough, but we had big improvements on crop yield year on year. Then, of course, came the German invasion.”
“They called it Blitzkrieg, didn’t they?”
“My God, it was frightening, the speed they came at us.”
“So, what happened when they reached Dyovsta?”
“I was drafted into the Red Army well before that. I saw a lot of action, but we were pushed back and back, eventually as far as Kiev, where we surrendered. I ended up in a POW camp. Such a horrible place, Asher. I can’t bear to describe the conditions in there.”
“I can understand that. I can guess how it was. Move on, if it upsets you to talk about it.”
“Right, well, yes.” Mykhail took another gulp of water.
Asher waited, but Mykhail looked up at the clock.
“And?” Asher said.
“You know we’ve been talking for over an hour?”
“That long?” Asher replied.
“You hungry? I’ve probably got something in the fridge.”
“Well, if you don’t mind.”
Twenty minutes later, they were both sitting at the kitchen table, finishing off the microwaved beef casserole.
“That was delicious,” Asher said, scraping the last of the gravy from the plate. “Did you make it?”
“Diane.”
“Ah.” He placed his spoon down and took a slug of water. “Where were we?” he said.
“What?”
“You were in this POW camp in Kiev.”
“Asher, did I ask you whether you ever got married?”
“You did.”
“Oh.” Mykhail started nodding, then stopped as if something had just occurred to him, and said, “But you didn’t really say why you didn’t marry.”
“You want me to explain that?”
Mykhail gave a confused frown. “Uh . . .”
“Surely I told you about Izabella?”
“Really? She’s the reason you never got married?”
Asher leaned in and lowered his voice. “Mykhail, old friend, I can trust you, can’t I?”
“Sure you can.”
“I can be honest?”
“As honest as you want to be. I’m . . . I’m interested. Really.”
Asher’s jowls seemed to drop a little. “I’m not sure I’ve ever told anyone this before, but . . .”
“Go on.”
“Well, for many years I was kidding myself. It sounds strange after all this time, but I told myself it was somehow disrespectful, even unfair, to have a wife and family when so many others don’t even have their lives.” He stared into space, gritting his teeth a little. “Even growing old sometimes feels wrong when so many will be forever young.”
“You said you were kidding yourself?”
Asher snapped himself out of his trance. “Yes. I was. You see, all that’s true—the feelings I have about finding love, feeling bad about surviving—but in my later years I’ve come to know the truth . . . why I never found a woman. It’s because I lost Izabella. I kept thinking I’d get over her one of these years, but while I was busy thinking that, I kinda went and got old.”
“I know what you mean, old-timer.”
“You know, I feel better for saying that, getting it off my chest.” Asher paused, forced a smile onto his face, then said, “Anyhow, come on, tell me how you got out of this POW camp in Kiev.”
Mykhail hesitated. “Well, there isn’t much to say.”
“I know it’s a hard thing to talk about, but at least tell me what happened between the POW camp and Pittsburgh.”
“Oh, it’s very boring. You don’t want to know.”
“Don’t want to know? Are you kidding me? Mykhail, tell me how you got out of the camp, how you got to America, why you settled in Pittsburgh.”
“Well, I’m not sure I can remember, to be honest.”
“It’ll come to you. Just start from when you were in the camp.”
Mykhail huffed a few times. “Oh . . . uh . . .” He stood up from the table. “Another coffee?”
“Playing for time?” Asher said, laughing. “Getting your story straight?”
Mykhail laughed too. “My friend, sometimes bringing buried memories back to the surface takes a little time.”
“Of course. I’m only joking. Take whatever time you need. And yes, I’ll have a coffee please.”
Mykhail made the coffee in silence, and they returned to the sunroom.
“So?” Asher said.
Mykhail blew across his hot coffee and took a tentative slurp. “Well,” he said, “there isn’t much I can say. It was such a horrid place. I don’t really know how I survived two winters in there. Luck, I guess. I only found out the scale of it much later. Do you know, there were about six million Red Army prisoners in all the camps combined, and about half of them perished there. That’s a lot of people. Anyhow, eventually the Red Army liberated us. I was still able-bodied, so after recovery I had to fight again with them. But I kept my head down and managed to stay away from the front line and out of trouble, which wasn’t too hard as the Germans were retreating by then.”
“So you saw no more active service?”
“Nothing to speak of. I went back to Dyovsta, but found my parents had perished in a German concentration camp. I guess I was a broken man. I’d seen so much horror that I didn’t want to stay in Ukraine—especially under Soviet rule. I wanted a better life for myself, and everybody said this country was the land of opportunity, so I aimed for New York.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, I can’t remember. It’s too long ago, but soon after the war. I remember getting to know a few people on the ship over who taught me a few words of English and told me more about America. They told me it was common for immigrants to change their names when coming here, to make them easier to spell and pronounce. It seemed obvious I should choose Michael Peterson.”
“And Pittsburgh?”
“Well, as they say, everybody’s gotta live someplace. I spent a year in New York, training as a car mechanic and learning English. I think I heard Pittsburgh was a steel town and figured there would be a lot of cars here. I had notions of opening my own place—nothing special or ambitious; just auto repairs and servicing—but it never happened, I just carried on being a grease monkey. But I married Jenny, who gave me a daughter and then divorced me. Then I, uh, carried on working. When I stopped doing that, I retired. And that’s where you come into the story, knocking on my door and surprising the hell out of me.” He let out a long sigh and lifted the coffee to his lips.
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