They Went Left

by Monica Hesse

  Gosia and the commander are staring at their plates, trying to disappear themselves from this exchange. Dima is staring at me, pleading.

  “Did you hear from Dachau, too?” I ask. “Or Birkenau? Damnit, Dima, is there anything else you’re keeping from me?”

  “Don’t swear, Zofia. You are not a girl who swears.”

  “I’ll swear if I want to,” I insist, tears filling my eyes.

  He shakes his head quickly. No, he’s saying, no, those places didn’t write back.

  Is this betrayal? Is it betrayal if he was trying to help me? If he did it in secret, but the goal was to find my brother? He meant well. I tell myself that. He was trying to help. And, he did help, actually. He found a place where Abek was not.

  Next to me, Gosia slides her hand across the floor until her fingers are splayed over mine. “The commander said Munich because a lot of the prisoners from Dachau, after the war, ended up going to another camp near Munich.” She exchanges a few words with Commander Kuznetsov before continuing. “A different kind of camp,” she clarifies.

  And now she’s speaking not in Russian or German or even Polish, but Yiddish. The language of our kitchens, of our private family time, the language acknowledging that the commander and Dima are not part of what happened to us. “A big refugee camp run by the United Nations. There are several. They’re for Jews who can’t get back to their homes or who haven’t been able to find their families.”

  “And it’s where Abek is likely to be if he was evacuated from Birkenau.”

  She takes her hand away. “That’s what he said. It’s called—” She switches back to German. “What is it called?”

  “Foehrenwald,” the commander says. He looks relieved to offer a piece of information that won’t cause me to be upset. “It’s impossible to know from here, though, whether your brother is in this camp. The staff is small and overworked. From what we’ve heard, it’s barely organized—it’s thousands of refugees, coming in and going out.”

  “Impossible to know from here,” I repeat. Now I’ve switched to Polish, but Dima, to my right, is shaking his head before I even say a few words.

  “Abek will come here,” he says. “That was your plan.”

  Sosnowiec was the plan. Staying together was the plan. Finding him was the plan.

  But what if he forgot the plan? He was only nine. What if he forgot our address? What if it’s not a place he knows anymore? What if he’s stuck, or hurt, or in a hospital as I was?

  “Did you know about this place?” I ask Dima sharply. “Is this another place you were keeping from me?”

  “No, I promise,” he says. “I didn’t know about this camp. We can write to it tomorrow.”

  “We can write,” I repeat. “But what if he leaves in the meantime?”

  “If he leaves, he will leave for here,” Dima says simply.

  “But what if he can’t get here? Or the letter doesn’t reach him?”

  “Zofia, you must be patient, but—”

  “What if he needs me? What if he’s alone and needs me right now? Aunt Maja just said—”

  “Who?” Dima interrupts politely.

  “Aunt Maja. Just now.”

  “Zofia.”

  “Aunt Maja.” My voice, rising with every syllable, until it’s almost a scream. “Aunt Maja just now said the prisoners from Birkenau went to Germany. Didn’t you hear her?”

  The silence in the room, the painful squeaking of a floorboard, is what makes me realize my mistake. My face reddens.

  “I mean Gosia, obviously. I know that’s Gosia, not Aunt Maja.”

  Quickly, I lower my head to my plate and saw off a piece of cabbage. But I can’t seem to get it to my mouth. In that moment, I did mean it. I was sitting in this dining room, and the person sitting next to me was my beautiful aunt Maja, and I lost myself again.

  Next to me, Gosia looks pitying and worried; her eyes flicker briefly to Dima’s. I saw them talking earlier while I finished cooking dinner. I wonder what he told her, how they have diagnosed me.

  They think I’m crazy already, so there’s no point in explaining how I was only briefly confused, by being in this apartment.

  There’s also no point in explaining the sudden certainty in my heart, which began building at the mention of this place called Foehrenwald. I know that I protected Abek as best as I could. Through all the war, I could feel him with me. If I hadn’t been able to feel his presence, I wouldn’t have been able to survive. I survived, so he must be in Foehrenwald.

  “I know it’s Gosia.” One more time I repeat it, more quietly this time. “Never mind.”

  Gosia leaves a few hours later when her brother-in-law comes to collect her. She hugs me and says I should come to the clinic tomorrow; they can always use volunteers. Over her shoulder, Dima nods at her. It must be something they planned, an excuse to keep me occupied. “Either way, I’ll stop in tomorrow evening,” she says. “I’ll try to bring more clothing and a spare lantern.”

  Now there is only one lantern in the house, and stubby candles. The apartment is shadows; Dima and Commander Kuznetsov are outlines as they talk near the door.

  Dima breaks away and comes over, taking my hands. “The commander says there is room for you if you come with us. You can stay there instead of by yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine here. Gosia brought me some things.”

  “The floor is so hard,” he presses on. “You at least need a—” He searches for a word he doesn’t know in Polish, before mimicking unrolling something on the floor.

  “A bedroll? I don’t.” The alcohol is getting to my head; it feels light and spinning. I’m still annoyed with Dima. I’ve slept on so many worse things than a clean blanket on a wooden floor.

  “No, I can bring one.” He looks back to where the commander is adjusting his hat, politely trying to give us privacy. “I will walk him home and come back.”

  “You can’t keep going back and forth. You’ve already been twice today.”

  But he insists, and finally it seems easiest to just agree. To let him bring back a bedroll, to cluck over me like I am a figurine.

  I GATHER THE DINNER PLATES, BUT THERE’S NO RUNNING water to wash them with. Gosia and I ate our plates clean. Dima and Commander Kuznetsov left scraps on theirs: a crust of bread, a few leaves of cabbage. On the commander’s plate, a piece of meat, mostly gristle, which he must have discreetly spit out.

  It’s blobby and chewed there on the plate, swimming in congealed tomato. I stare at it for a minute, nauseated.

  But then I’m putting those desiccated morsels into my own mouth. Scraping my finger along the tin, not even bothering to use a fork. The gristle sticks in my throat; I force it down. I am revolted by myself but also starving, or remembering what it was to be starving.

  What is wrong with me? What has become of me?

  In the next room, a knock at the door. I shove the plates into the dry kitchen sink, trying to put myself together.

  “I’m coming,” I call to Dima as the knock gets louder. “I’m sorry, I was in the ki—”

  I don’t finish, because it’s not Dima. Standing in the dim doorway are three men I don’t know, two who look like brothers with flat noses and clefts in their chins, and a third, taller and thin with bags under his eyes.

  “We heard there were Jews here,” says the taller of the men with flat noses. “This neighborhood is Judenrein.”

  Judenrein. That was the German term. That’s why we had to leave this apartment to begin with. This neighborhood is Judenrein.

  But German words can’t dictate what neighborhoods are free of Jews anymore, can they?

  My mouth is dry as yarn. “Where did you hear that?”

  I don’t know why I think I can buy time. They’ll learn the truth eventually. Everything about my appearance looks as though I was in a camp.

  Faintly, coming off their clothes, I smell alcohol and sweat, and now my heart starts to pound. The speaker brushes past me into my own house, and the othe
rs follow, backing me farther inside. Their eyes roam the apartment, what they can make out of it in the dark.

  “There’s nothing to take,” I manage. “You can see, the only furniture left is junk. And I’m the only one here.”

  Stupid, I chastise myself as soon as this sentence passes my lips. I’d meant, maybe you can leave me be because I am obviously no harm to you. But now the original man’s face is leering in the lantern light at this discovery that I’m alone.

  “If you’re hungry, I can—I can get you some food, maybe,” I improvise, trying to find a way to edge around closer to the door. “My friend is on his way back, right now.”

  “You said you were alone, Jewess.”

  “I’m alone now, but my friend will be here soon. He’s a lieutenant. In the Red Army.”

  “Convenient, there’s a boyfriend now,” the dark-circled man mutters under his breath.

  There’s no place I can go to maneuver myself away from all three of them. Already, the second brother has positioned himself in front of the door. The other two are still wandering about my apartment.

  “There is a boyfriend,” I insist in a way that sounds so fake even I wouldn’t believe me.

  I don’t see any weapons, though maybe they’re hidden beneath their jackets. Please let them just steal my things and not beat me. Please let them just beat me and not rape me. Please let them just rape me and not kill me.

  Please kill me. Please just kill me. Why not; how else will this ever be over?

  “I can pay you,” I offer, desperate. “For—for the trouble of having me use the apartment.”

  At this, two of the men look mildly interested, so I keep talking about the money. I’ll give them everything left from what Dima provided for groceries and try to keep the large, unbroken bill from the hospital. “Just let me get it. While I’m doing that, there’s vodka in the kitchen. Nearly a whole bottle; you can take it.”

  I don’t want them drinking more. But the vodka is a distraction, and I don’t want them following me into the bedroom, either. So as two of them go to the alcohol, I rush past the one guarding the door, into the bedroom, fumbling in my checked gingham cloth where I’d stuffed all the money.

  From the hallway, I hear more noises, whispering. And then, one of the men calls out to the original speaker, whom I’ve begun to think of as the leader.

  “Piotr.”

  I peek around the corner. The men cluster around Dima’s cap resting on a chair, prominent sickle and hammer.

  “I told you.” I find my voice, stepping back into the room. “His name is Lieutenant Sokolov. He works at the—he works for Ivan Kuznetsov.” I don’t know whether this name will be familiar to them, but I say it as though I expect it will.

  “Shut up, Jewess.”

  His voice is dismissive, but I think it mattered, what I said. The Russians are in control here now. That has to mean something.

  “He’ll be back soon.” Now, I stalk toward the door as if I have more courage than I really do and hold out the leftover grocery money. “So I think you should take this and leave.”

  The one named Piotr menacingly snatches the bills from my hand. “Next week. We’ll pay you a little visit next week.”

  When they leave, I relock the door and then sink down against it. My thudding heart aches in my chest. My heart hurts even when it’s not beating. But that can’t be right, because my heart hasn’t stopped beating, my heart has continued beating even while the hearts of almost everyone else I ever met have stopped beating, and that is why my heart hurts.

  A is for Abek.

  Z is for Zofia.

  I’m still on the floor twenty minutes later when Dima tries to open the door. He pushes once, twice. “Zofia?” His voice rises in panic.

  “One minute, please,” I manage, raking my fists across my eyes and dragging myself to my feet. I open the door. “Some men came. I locked the door when they left, for safety.”

  “What men?” He looks back into the hallway; his voice tenses and deepens. “They will come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dima edges past me. Setting the bedroll down on the floor, he stalks around the apartment, checking to make sure the windows are locked.

  “If they come back, it won’t be tonight,” I say. “They saw your cap, and it scared them.”

  He finishes his window inspection. He’s still worried, but there’s a small amount of pleasure in his eyes at this last thing I said about his cap protecting me.

  “I have this.” He points to the bedroll, army-issued, olive green.

  “Thank you.”

  “You are sure you don’t come with me?” He takes a few steps toward me, closing the space between us.

  “I have to stay. I don’t want anyone to think this apartment is empty.”

  “What if I stay tonight?” He’s come all the way across the room now. He strokes his index finger along my cheek. “Not in your room,” he adds hurriedly. “But, for protection.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know, my parents did not speak same language, either,” Dima says, shy-sounding. “He was a soldier, too. Already, I speak more Polish than my father. I think they are very happy now.”

  “I’m sure they are,” I say quietly.

  This is the first time he’s spoken so plainly about his feelings, plainly enough that I can’t pretend something has been lost in translation, or that I think his kindness is merely friendly.

  I have no job. The money given to me at the hospital will run out. I am not safe here alone. Dima cares about me. He wants to protect me. All I have to do is be kind to him. All I have to do is accept this life.

  Dima might care about me mostly because he rescued me. But I’m using him, too. The times I theatrically clapped my hands at the gift of lipstick. All the times I watched him swell with pride at the coos of the nothing-girls. The fact that I could leave the hospital because I was leaving with Dima.

  Does that make it wrong, though? Relationships have been built on less.

  “Do you want me to stay?” he asks.

  “All right,” I say, and then wet my lips and make myself start again. “That would be nice, but you don’t have to sleep out here. I still have only one blanket. You would be cold.”

  In my childhood bedroom, where I have not slept since before my family was murdered and my country was broken, I unroll the bed mat brought to me by a Russian soldier. I make it up with the faded blanket brought to me by the friend of my dead aunt, and then I lie down in the dress I’m wearing because I still don’t have any nightclothes.

  Dima lies behind me, respectful. His breathing isn’t steady enough for him to be sleeping. He’s awake, looking at me, at the outline of me in the dark. I feel his hand on my hair, stroking from the top of my scalp to where my hair stops. He does it three times, and just as I’m waiting to see if he’ll do more, I can tell he’s waiting on the same from me, to see if I turn over, or wriggle back so my rear nestles in the crease of his hips.

  Baba Rose would stroke my hair in this room, intently and reassuringly, as if she had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.

  Aunt Maja would stroke my hair in this room, talking through her own problems.

  Mama stroked my hair in this room, and though she always seemed tired and sometimes fell asleep with her hand heavy on my head, she also told me fairy tales and sang whatever songs she’d heard on the radio that day.

  I hear a crack coming from the next room. I know it’s the sound of an old building settling, but I have to stop myself from crying out: Abek?

  Behind me, Dima’s hand has stopped, resting on the mat behind me, accidentally pinning a few strands of my hair to the bedroll below. I lie there, pinned, not wanting any movement to be misinterpreted, and after a few minutes, I feel him shift behind me, turning over, facing the wall, lightly snoring.

  The scene from dinner keeps creeping into my mind. Dima didn’t apologize for keeping the Bergen-Belsen letter from me, not real
ly. It obviously pained him to hurt me, but he said he’d done it only to protect me. Do I want that kind of protection?

  Is this the best life I can build now? Security and kindness, and a man who will leave in the dark to bring me something soft to sleep on, but keep things from me if he thinks they could cause me hurt? His parents were happy, he told me. He wanted me to know that we could be happy, too. Do I want to be happy this way?

  Do I?

  I ease out of the makeshift bed, crawling across the floor on my hands and knees so as not to make a sound. In the closet, I feel for the upholstered valise with the broken clasp and fill it with the belongings I have: the undergarments and soap from Gosia, the kerchief from Nurse Urbaniak. My eyes pause on the hope chest, and I wonder if I should take some things from it. But I don’t know how far I’ll have to walk, and I don’t want to be weighed down. And this time I’m coming back, I remind myself. Better to leave these possessions where they’ll be safe.

  Dima snores behind me. Near the doorway, I find his clothes, his jacket hanging on the back of a chair, his pants folded neatly on the seat. I slip my hand into the jacket pocket and feel a packet of bills. In the dark, I can’t tell if they’re zlotys, or deutsche marks, or whatever money they use in Russia, but, trying to ignore the pang of guilt, promising myself I’ll make it right later, I take all the money.

  I write Dima a note, an insufficient one scratched by moonlight, laying it on top of his pants:

  I have to go find him. Stay in the apartment as long as you want. Give it to Gosia if you don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to find him.

  The valise is light in my hand. I clutch it to my chest as I ease out the door.

  THE LAST TIME I SAW ABEK, ANOTHER VERSION I DREAM SOMETIMES:

  I had heard of Auschwitz. We all had by then. Rumors of torture, rumors of death.

  Please don’t send us to Auschwitz, I begged the soldier in charge of guarding us when my family had left the stadium, when we’d been sent to tenement apartments on the outskirts of the city to await the next leg. Please not Auschwitz; we can work hard. Especially my brother. Didn’t I hear you say your commander needed a good errand boy? My brother would be a good errand boy. He’s healthy; look at him. He already speaks three languages. Wouldn’t this be useful?