They Went Left

by Monica Hesse

  “Have you taken the stenography class?” I ask Breine, trying to find my manners. “The one Esther’s doing?”

  She laughs. “I’m going to be a lovely, docile farmwife. I am going to grow onions and make cakes and ask Chaim to impregnate me immediately. I won’t have use for stenography.”

  Esther smiles indulgently, twisting Breine’s hair into a braid. “Does Chaim know these plans?”

  “This is the benefit of marrying someone who’s known you for only five weeks. I’ll make Chaim docile and content, too, before he has a chance to know these plans.”

  “Five weeks?” I blurt out.

  Breine cranes her head to face me, while Esther pivots around to finish the braid. “Five weeks tomorrow.”

  I try to keep the shock off my face. I’d assumed Breine and Chaim had met as teenagers, and then somehow found each other after the war. Or even that they met in a camp. There was love in the camps. It seems impossible, but I saw it; I saw love poems composed in lice-filled barracks.

  Five weeks is nothing. Five weeks ago, I was still in the hospital.

  “We met here,” she continues. “Plowing a field. Isn’t that romantic?”

  “But—I don’t mean to make judgments—but you barely know each other.”

  I’m afraid Breine will be angry with me for puncturing her happiness, but instead she leans forward in her chair, stretching out a hand until I take it. “Chaim and I have known each other for five weeks. I knew my last fiancé, Wolf, for two years. We didn’t have a wedding because we wanted to wait until the war was over, and every day I think about how I’d change that if I could. So now I’ll have a wedding, and it will be with Chaim and not with Wolf. And I’m certain a part of Chaim wishes his wedding would be with the girl he loved in Hungary before me, who died and whose picture he keeps that he thinks I don’t know about.”

  I start to apologize, but she cuts me off with a shake of her head. “Today I am choosing to love the person in front of me. Do you understand? Because he’s here, I’m here, and we’re ready to not be lonely together. Chaim is a good man. I won’t let another wedding pass me by.”

  When they leave, I make my own bed and wash my face, then I gather my pile of letters to see if Mrs. Yost can tell me how to mail them. In her office, the telephone receiver is crammed against her ear. She depresses the button on the cradle again and again, trying for an operator.

  “Darnit. I just had—hello? Hello?—Darnit.”

  On the desk in front of her, the Foehrenwald arrivals log is open to a fresh page, with Feldafing written at the top. She must be preparing for the new influx of residents. Mrs. Yost catches my eye, then registers the sheaf of papers in my hand.

  “Put them here,” she instructs, nodding to a wire mail bin on her desk, already overflowing with other people’s problems. “Hello?” This greeting isn’t to me but to the phone receiver. “Hello?” she tries one more time before cupping her hand over the receiver and acknowledging me again. “And don’t forget to remind Josef about tomorrow.”

  “Josef?”

  “He’s the one going for supplies. We don’t have the other car working yet; he’s best with the horses.”

  “But,” I start to say.

  “But?”

  But nothing, but what am I supposed to say? That I met this man once and insisted he looked familiar? That I got carried away by his laugh when I’m supposed to be doing nothing but looking for my brother? That I kept sneaking glances at him all through dinner, wondering why he was alone and whether I should join him?

  Should I tell her I made Josef so uncomfortable he left without even shaking my hand?

  Mrs. Yost frantically depresses the telephone button, and I hear the faint, faraway sound of someone on the other end of the line. Her eyes light up.

  “I’ll go,” I mouth, shutting the door behind me.

  I find him in the stables, a whitewashed building on the outskirts of camp. It smells like dust and the clean hay tamped down on the floor.

  He’s sitting on a low, three-legged stool, tending to one of the horses, a fawn-colored animal whose mane is nearly white. A second one, chestnut with an inky-black mane, swishes its tail in a stall. The one Josef is with—a palomino, I think it’s called—stands with its hooves in shallow pans of water. As I step through the doorway, Josef lifts the horse’s right leg, tucking the hoof between his own knees, and begins scraping the bottom with what looks like a long nail file. The horse flicks its tail but otherwise submits.

  “Cleaning its feet?” I ask. Josef must have heard someone at the door, but he doesn’t turn to acknowledge me, focusing instead on his precise work.

  “Trimming back her hooves. They grow just like people’s fingernails.”

  “Does it hurt her?”

  “Not if you do it the right way.” His voice is—not friendly, exactly, but not as brusque as it was yesterday. But then he looks up for the first time, and when he realizes it’s me standing there, they darken. He lowers his eyes and continues with his work.

  “The water is to prepare her hooves?” I stumble on, pretending I haven’t noticed the change in his mood.

  “To make them softer. Easier to sculpt. Why are you here, Zofia?”

  I try to ignore the small thrill of hearing him say my name, but I can’t ignore how much I like watching him. There’s an ease to his movement, a gracefulness. I like that when he finishes the front hoof and moves on to the horse’s hind leg, he trails his hand along her back and makes clicking sounds so she never loses track of where he is. I like the way he smoothly draws the stool back to his new position with one foot. I like the slight unevenness of his shoulders, the way one is just a bit higher than the other.

  “Can I help?” I ask, instead of answering his question. As soon as I answer, my reason for being here will disappear.

  Josef presses his lips together and nods back toward the door. “Actually, yes. You can get an apple for Feather to have as a treat when I’m through—there’s a sack of bruised ones outside.”

  On a bench a few meters away, I find a canvas bag and carry it in. Josef motions for me to hang it on a nail, but first I take an apple out to have something to do with my hands. It’s soft and warm; I bring it to my nose and inhale the scent of cider. “Mrs. Yost said you would take me tomorrow when you go to pick up supplies,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. To tell you.”

  I expect him to ask why I need to go, but after a small hesitation, he shrugs. “If that’s what she told you. I’ll leave early, though.” He’s turned back to Feather’s hoof, so the only sounds are a soft scraping and the occasional slaps of the horse’s tail against her flanks as she swats flies.

  My father, swatting flies off Abek as my family waited to be separated in the stadium.

  My bunkmates, swatting flies off me in the textile factory, when I was injured and too weak to work one day and I knew I’d be killed if I couldn’t get better.

  “Josef. Your fight yesterday. What was it about?”

  “Why is it important for you to know?”

  Because I keep thinking about you, and I don’t know why.

  “Because I’m going to get in a wagon with you tomorrow, alone, and I would like to know whether I’m going on a trip with someone dangerous.”

  He opens, then closes, his mouth. “That’s… I suppose that’s reasonable.”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m not dangerous,” he says.

  “Then what was your fight about?

  Feather stamps one of her feet in the pan of water. A gentle stomp, with a gentle splash. Josef stops his work to make sure she’s okay. “It was about you.”

  The flush that spreads across my collarbone stems from confusion, but it’s also pleasure. “Me? The fight was about me?”

  “Yes. Something Rudolf said.”

  “What was it?”

  “I want to make sure you understand—it was the third time I’ve heard him say something like that,” he says. “The time before, the
girl was only fourteen.”

  This, I think, is a way of saying, I didn’t do it for you. Of saying, don’t be either flattered or alarmed, you were more of an excuse than a reason. “What did he say, exactly?”

  Josef’s mouth twists. I think for a minute he’ll refuse to tell me.

  “Rudolf said, ‘Put her in the right dress and she’s still fuckable.’ He said, ‘In the war, all Jewesses would fuck for a scrap of bread.’”

  “In the war, all dirty men were glad for our starvation,” I spit back reflexively, overcome by anger at Rudolf’s disgusting sentiment. “Since they could use it to try to get us to fuck them.”

  It’s only after my initial rage dissipates that I feel myself blush, surprised I’ve said those words out loud, less than a day after I also said piss.

  Josef laughs, the same sharp, surprised laugh I heard yesterday. Maybe I cursed this time because I wanted to hear that laugh again. And suddenly I am laughing, too. About something dark and terrible and not at all worth laughing at, but I’m laughing anyway.

  “It’s true, right?” I press. “A horrible man like Rudolf wouldn’t be able to get it any other way.”

  “Something tells me that a horrible man like Rudolf has never gotten it under any circumstances,” Josef says. “He’s a true latrine-puncher.”

  “A piss-goat,” I concur.

  “I promise you, very few people here were sorry to see something happen to Rudolf.”

  “So you’re, what—the avenger of the camp?”

  “No.” Josef is still smiling, but there’s less mirth in his eyes now. “I’m not. I’m just the person who doesn’t really care if Rudolf hits me back.”

  “What do you mean? Why not?”

  “Nothing. It was a joke.” He turns abruptly back to his work, coaxing Feather’s final hoof out of the water. She nickers again, a noise that sounds almost like a laugh.

  “Josef,” I say softly. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday, when I asked about the fight?”

  He answers with his back to me again. “Because I didn’t want you to think I thought I was a hero,” he says. “And I didn’t want us to owe each other anything.”

  “Oh.”

  I’d thought his explanation would have to do with the vulgarity of it all, with his wanting to protect me from profane words. That’s what Dima would have done. Protected me. Gallantly, like a knight. Josef’s explanation—transactional, matter-of-fact—isn’t one I was prepared for. It throws me off balance.

  Josef finishes Feather’s last hoof, moving to the other horse and telling me I can feed Feather the apple now.

  I notice for the first time that he’s wearing the same shirt from the fight. It’s been laundered; the bloodstains are barely visible, and the two buttons have been sewn back on. Sewn clumsily—I can tell that from here—but attached nonetheless. The ripped pocket still hangs loose, though, a flap against his chest.

  “I could fix your pocket for you,” I offer. “The one that got torn in your fight.”

  “No, thank you. As I said, I don’t want us to be beholden to each other.”

  “This isn’t you being beholden to me; it’s me evening the score. For Rudolf. Besides, it’s just a pocket. And I’d do a professional job. I’ve been sewing since I was six.”

  I see hesitation in his shoulders before they hunch protectively. “No.”

  The air around us has shifted a little; it’s uncomfortable now. But I try not to take it personally. In the camps, I would not have handed my clothes over to a stranger, either. They were as likely to be stolen as mended.

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” I try. “Bright and early? Dark and early?”

  This time, he doesn’t even bother responding; he merely nods, shortly, as if I’m barely present.

  Feather finishes the apple from my hand, and as soon as she’s through, I wipe my hands on my dress and make for the door.

  THE COTTAGE IS EMPTY WHEN I GET BACK TO IT, HOT AND quiet in the middle of the day. The pen still lies where I left it before, next to the few sheets of paper I didn’t use for my letters to the relief organizations.

  There are other kinds of letters I didn’t write, which I know I should. The one weighing on me most heavily is to Dima. I should tell him I arrived safely in Foehrenwald. I should apologize to him properly for taking the money from his pockets and thank him properly for the help he gave me. But when I press the pen to the paper, words don’t come. I know writing to him would be a kindness, but I wonder if it would also be unfair, that it would sound as if I was asking more from him or telling him to wait for me.

  Dear Dima.

  Was I telling him to wait for me? I want to make sure my apartment is safe for when I bring Abek back to it, but do I want Dima to be waiting in it? Right now, he feels far away. Right now, when I try to picture his face, I instead picture him telling me that he’d kept things from me because he thought I needed to be protected.

  I cross out his name, using thick black lines, and start again.

  Dear Gosia.

  Before I can figure out what to say next, the door swings open, saving me from myself. Breine dashes in, sunny and pink from her work outside, out of breath as she scans the small room. “Esther isn’t here?”

  “I just got back and haven’t seen her. Is everything all right?”

  “We’ll try to find her on the way.” She dashes to the writing desk and glances at my feet to make sure I’m wearing shoes. “Quick!” she says, extending her hand.

  I’d be worried by Breine’s rush, but she’s laughing—it’s clear that whatever she wants us to hurry for isn’t something bad. Slowly, too slowly for her liking, I cap my pen and slide my chair back.

  “Breine, where are we—”

  “Donation boxes! A big truck. Hurry, before all the good things are gone.”

  I let her drag me out of the cottage, through the camp, and to the dining hall.

  A cluster of people has formed inside, with more streaming in every minute, flushed and excited like Breine. They’re gathered around the central dining tables, which are piled with wooden crates. The lids are already removed, clothing and books spilling out.

  “Grab some things quickly, even if you don’t like them,” Breine advises as we shoulder in at one of the tables. “That way, even if you don’t find anything else, you’ll have some things to trade later.”

  The two women we squeeze between hover possessively over the table, positioning their bodies so the crates in front of them are just out of our reach. But when one of them recognizes Breine, she immediately makes room and tells the others to do the same.

  “Breine’s getting married,” she loudly admonishes. “She gets first choice of anything that could work as a wedding dress.”

  The other women step aside for Breine, who pulls me forward with her.

  “What are you looking for?” I ask her. “If you could have any kind of wedding dress you liked?”

  “White,” she says. “Long sleeves. And a neck that goes like—” She traces a curly pattern along her collarbone.

  “A sweetheart neckline,” I offer.

  “Yes, like that. Tell me if you find anything like that.”

  I move next to Breine and dip my hands into the box. Familiarity shoots through my fingers like an electric buzz.

  Cotton. Wool. Gabardine. Twill. The coarse butcher linen used for homemakers’ aprons, the nubby, textured Shetland used for winter suits. My hands get lost in the fabric. Deep inside the crates, I can identify them by touch. If I couldn’t touch them, I could probably identify them by smell. The quiet musk of a flannel suit; the pungent blush of taffeta transformed into a woman’s first party dress. The doll dresses I made as a child, dozens of them, out of the scraps of fabric my father brought home. The handkerchiefs, the coin purses.

  Even more than walking into my family’s abandoned apartment in Sosnowiec, the expectedness of these clothes feels comforting. It feels like home.

  Around me, women pluc
k sweaters and skirts from the crates, holding them up to one another for size or slipping them on right there over the clothes they’re wearing. The unwanted garments are left spread on the tables, a chaotic kaleidoscope of color.

  “Oh, can I try that if it doesn’t fit you?” one woman says, pointing to the skirt another is wriggling over her hips. “Robin’s-egg blue is my favorite color.”

  “It’s yours,” the other woman promises, stepping out of the skirt again. “But help me find something in a floral pattern. I always wore flowers.”

  There’s something so tender in the discerning, critical way these women pick through the clothes. Not just grabbing things because they’re warm or because they fit, but looking for clothes that will help them reclaim the pieces of themselves they had to give away.

  That’s what my family’s business did, at its best. Zayde Lazer was a businessman, and so was Papa when Zayde first hired him. But Baba Rose was the one who understood that clothing isn’t always a practical business. Customers buy things that make them feel more like themselves.

  A young woman jostles into me, trying to maneuver her way into a fitted woolen jacket. “I love this, but I can’t raise my hands above my head,” she complains to her friend, demonstrating the tight squeeze, the strained threads.

  “You just need to insert some extra fabric under the arm,” I say automatically.

  She turns to me. “Is that difficult?”

  “It shouldn’t be. You don’t even have to remove the whole sleeve. Just cut away the bottom, and sew in little ovals the size of eggs.”

  She looks skeptical. “Are you sure?”

  “It fits you everywhere else. See? It’s not straining at your shoulders. It’s straining here, by your armpit.” I pinch the fabric to show her.

  The advice came from a part of my mind I haven’t used in a while, a bear waking from hibernation. The girl’s mouth drops open in gratitude, and she immediately begins to make plans for the jacket. She’ll wear it to a job interview, she tells her friend. She heard that one of the camp administrators is looking for a typist; this jacket is exactly the kind of thing she was hoping to find.