by Monica Hesse
“But in the picture, it will look white,” Mrs. Yost insists. “If they show a photograph of this day to their grandchildren in fifty years, nobody needs to know it was taken in a camp.”
Breine’s uncle and Mrs. Van Houten walk Breine to the chuppah and in a circle around Chaim, who lets his eyes follow her while he faces the crowd.
A Hungarian man is marrying a Polish and Czech woman, who is escorted by a Dutch woman standing in for her mother and an estranged uncle standing in for her father, and they all know what to do right now because their faith is the same language.
I haven’t been to a wedding in years, not since I was a child. Not since before the Germans invaded. But when the rabbi reaches the Seven Blessings, I find myself nodding along to the Hebrew words I didn’t know I remembered.
Blessed are you, Lord, who gladdens the groom and bride.
Tears pool in my eyes and run, salty, down my face. Mrs. Yost, normally exasperated and impatient, pulls a handkerchief from her sleeve. Esther’s glasses have slipped almost entirely off her nose because she’s been too distracted by the ceremony to periodically push them up.
I see Josef where the men are standing, angular in the candlelight, his hair still unruly but his face smooth, recently shaved in a way that makes it look naked. As I watch, his eyes move away from the couple and, under the cover of the shadows, he meets my eyes instead. He must have felt me staring.
I should feel embarrassed, but I don’t look away. I don’t know if it’s the joy of the moment, or my new dress, or the happiness of the past few days that emboldens me, but I want to be seen by him. On this day, when my lips are plumped with lipstick and my hair is freshly washed, I want to be looked at like I’m pretty.
I decide I’ll hold his gaze until he’s the one to look away. But then he doesn’t. We’re staring at each other between the poles of the makeshift chuppah, while wax runs down my fingertips and the ceremony carries on in the background. Our locked eyes are only broken by the sound of smashing glass, followed by a cheer.
Startled, I break away from Josef’s gaze. Under Chaim’s foot is a loose bundle of cloth, which now must contain broken shards. The breaking of the glass is the final part of the ceremony. It’s supposed to symbolize a lot of things; my father once said it reminded him of the fragility of life. Now we know firsthand that life is fragile, and we don’t need that reminder. But Breine wanted a real wedding, so I clap with everyone else until my palms hurt.
AFTER THE CEREMONY, WE MOVE BACK TO THE DINING HALL, where a few men have gathered instruments, playing lively music to accompany the dinner. Tables have been pushed to the periphery and piled with plates—dishes from Breine’s and Chaim’s home countries and all the other countries represented in the camp.
I make Abek go ahead of me in the food line, telling him to take double the portions of his favorites, and then lead him to our usual table, where Esther already sits with friends. It’s everyone from our regular dinner group, except the spot where Miriam usually sits has been taken by Breine’s uncle. I’m grateful, at least, that the infirmary is far away from the dining hall, out of earshot. Miriam always seemed to enjoy hearing Breine plan her wedding, but making her listen to boisterous wedding festivities just the day after she learned about her sister seems unbelievably cruel.
I feel a stab of guilt, watching Abek settle in with his plate: This wedding celebration came at the most horrible time for her and the most wonderful time for me.
“Did you have a good time?” I ask Abek, once I’ve introduced him to the people he hasn’t met.
“Yes,” he says. But as he responds, his cheeks tint with a salmon shade of pink.
“Did you?” I pry. “Are you sure?”
“It was nice,” he insists. “It’s just—”
“What? What are you blushing about?”
“Uncle Świętopełk,” he finally murmurs, barely above a whisper, eyes darting to where Breine’s fastidious uncle is cutting his food into tidy parcels, dabbing his mouth with a napkin in between each bite.
“Uncle Świętopełk?” I repeat, confused. “What about him?”
“I was standing behind him during the ceremony,” Abek whispers. “And he was…” He bursts into giggles before he can finish the sentence.
“Was what? What was he doing?”
“He was farting.” Abek barely gets the word out before he starts to fall apart in laughter. “The whole ceremony. It smelled so bad. The whole time.”
“No.”
“A-a-nd sometimes they were quiet, but…”
“No.”
“But there was one part where it was like, like…”
“Like a bugle?” I suggest.
“Like a piccolo! It was like, teet, teet, teet! Teetle-teetle.”
Abek buries his face in his napkin, trying to disguise his laughter from everyone else at the table, and I sneak a glance at Uncle Świętopełk, lifting another morsel of food to his mouth.
“Abek. Abek.” I jab my brother in the side, and he lowers the napkin just enough to reveal one teary eye. “Look at his plate. He’s only eating cabbage. His whole plate is just piles and piles of cabbage.”
I’m building this joke because it’s funny, because the mood is so light that everything seems a little funnier tonight. But also because it seems like the kind of joke that Abek and I have had before. Because when he was eight years old, nothing made him laugh more than when I put the heels of my hand over my mouth and blew out what sounded like a very rude noise.
“Cabbage,” Abek repeats in mock horror. “Oh no. Where is he sleeping tonight? Someone needs to warn—”
“Everyone?” I fill in.
“Someone needs to warn everyone in the camp, immediately.” He cups his hands around his mouth, as if forming a megaphone. “Attention. We have an important announcement regarding Uncle Tootle.”
“Shhhhhhh. He’ll hear you.”
“Uncle Tootle will be providing the music tonight.”
I kick him under the table, such a familiar gesture it nearly makes me gasp, and Abek starts chewing the inside of his cheek as he tries to quell his laughter.
“Abek.”
“I’m trying,” he wheezes.
“Why don’t you go walk around?” I suggest. “Get some more food, and see if there’s another bottle of wine for the table, and we’ll both pull ourselves together in the meantime.”
He obediently backs out his chair, and I watch him retreat toward the food table, shoulders still occasionally shaking.
Esther is watching me, her eyes wise and appraising. “You laugh the same,” she says.
“Do we?” I smile with pride.
“You must be so, so happy,” she says, and I reach across the table to squeeze her hand.
By the time Abek returns, I think it’s safe: Uncle Świętopełk has left our table to go join some of the older folks having a quiet conversation in the corner.
Abek didn’t bring another plate of food with him, but instead slides an open bottle of wine onto the table. He pours me a glass and then, despite my raised eyebrow, pours himself one, too.
“You know who I’m thinking of?” I tell him. “Papa. Watching that wedding made me think of him.”
“About his and Mama’s wedding?”
“No, not exactly. Though I guess I was thinking of them like that, too. But mostly, I was thinking about how Papa was a good man. When he married Mama, he might have wanted to move into his own house, not to move in with his wife’s parents and little sister. But he did anyway—he really almost raised Aunt Maja, too, didn’t he?
“He was always trying to do the right thing,” I continue. “Even that day in the stadium, trying to defend the old pharmacist when he knew it would—” I break off. “Anyway, when Breine’s uncle walked her to Chaim, it made me think of Papa.”
“Because Papa walked Aunt Maja to the chuppah?”
“Because—no, Abek, Aunt Maja never married. Don’t you remember?”
“Mmm-hmm
. Do you want another glass?” he asks, lifting the bottle.
I wave my hand to show him I don’t. “You remember what she always said about what a man would have to have in order for her to marry?”
“Yes. I said yes.”
I realize now that my brother looks a little red in the face and glassy in the eyes and that his wineglass is already empty when mine is still nearly full. Remembering that the bottle was open when he brought it to the table, I have a sneaking suspicion that this glass isn’t his first. So when he reaches for the bottle again, I move my hand first for the pitcher of water sitting in the middle of the table and fill Abek’s glass with that instead.
“It’s a wedding, Zofia,” he protests. “A special occasion!”
“And it looks like you celebrated enough already. You’re twelve.”
“You told me to get more wine!”
“I didn’t tell you to drink it,” I say, laughing.
“You don’t need to lecture me like that,” he snaps.
Across the table, a few seatmates have noticed our conversation and are unsuccessfully trying not to stare. Abek leans back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. I can tell he feels embarrassed at being singled out as so young. Everyone else at the table has been drinking; I’ve had a few glasses myself. I’m wondering, suddenly, if there would have been any harm in pouring him just one more swallow so that he could save face rather than feel embarrassed in front of a group of new people he’s just met.
“Maybe if you watered it down,” I suggest, trying to compromise.
“Water it down?”
“Or in another few hours, you could—”
“That’s not the point.”
But I don’t know what the point is. I can’t believe he’d really get so upset over a glass of wine, but I can’t think of what else would have made him suddenly so sullen and defensive.
Esther raises a sympathetic eyebrow; she’s witnessed the whole exchange. Deciding something, she drops her napkin onto the table and circles over to us.
“Abek, I was wondering if you would like to dance with me? I’m not very good,” she apologizes. “But if you don’t mind a clumsy partner, we can have a go together.”
I look up at her in gratitude as she extends her hand and Abek takes it. The two of them weave onto the floor, bobbing awkwardly to the music.
Lots of other people have also partnered up, and now I’m the only one left at our table, which is littered with mismatched cups and crumpled napkins. I down the contents of my glass while watching the dance floor.
There were bottles of good wine, and now they’re empty; there were bottles of bad liquor, and now they’re almost empty, too. By now I’ve drunk enough this evening that sitting still makes me woozy, so I busy myself by gathering all the dirty dishes into a pile and carrying them into the kitchen.
Josef stands at the big white sink, arms submerged to the elbows.
“You’re not out there dancing?” I set the dishes on the counter.
He gestures to the soapy water. “We’d run out of plates.” As if to further illustrate his point, he takes a dirty one off the stack I’ve just brought in and begins to wash it.
But on the other side of the sink is a different stack, nearly as tall, of clean plates.
“Don’t you think that should be enough for now?” I ask. “Most people have already eaten. Why don’t you come back to the party, and we’ll just bring out the ones you’ve washed so far.”
He shakes his head and grabs another plate. “I’m not much of a dancer anyway.”
“Neither is Esther, but you should see her trying to teach Abek out there.”
“I might as well finish. Someone is going to have to eventually.”
It’s clear he won’t be persuaded, so I roll up my own sleeves and grab a clean towel.
“You don’t have to,” he protests as I tie a makeshift apron over my dress. “Especially not with your brother here.”
“I’m trying not to hover over him. I think I’ve already embarrassed him once tonight. Here, you wash, I’ll dry. This will be faster with two of us.”
We move through the stack swiftly, but I can tell from his occasional intakes of breath that there’s something he wants to say. The next time he pulls a dish out of the water, he doesn’t let go when I move to grab it. Suspended between our two hands, it dribbles water onto the floor.
“I never congratulated you for finding him,” he says. “Or apologized for saying you wouldn’t.”
“You were only being rational,” I say magnanimously. It’s easy to be magnanimous, of course, since my brother is right now less than fifty meters away. “Most people would have agreed I was foolish.”
His grip on the plate only tightens. “But what if you’d actually listened to me? If you’d listened to me and you hadn’t put up all those letters, or—”
“Josef, we’re at a wedding,” I sigh. “I’m in the nicest dress I’ve worn in years, and I’m wearing it to wash dishes in the kitchen. Now hurry up and let’s finish so I can take this apron off and you can tell me I look beautiful in my dress.” The words coming out of my mouth are fueled a bit by alcohol, no doubt, but not so much that I couldn’t control them if I really wanted to.
“And that, by the way, is what a person in a new dress wants to hear when she walks in a room,” I continue. “‘You look beautiful.’ Not, ‘We’re out of dishes.’”
I’ve shocked Josef into letting go of the wet plate. It reels back against the front of the dress I’ve just finished bragging about. My grip seems tight enough at first, but the plate slips through my hands—and then through Josef’s as he, too, tries to grab it as it falls—and finally it crashes onto the floor, shattering into pieces.
“Oh,” I say uselessly as the shards settle around my feet.
“I’ll get a broom,” he says.
Damnit.
We sweep up the pieces, big ones in a trash bin, smaller ones wrapped in a cloth, and the only words exchanged—Do you see that piece under the sink—are practical ones.
I’ve ruined the moment, if there ever was one. On my hands and knees, I skim the floor with a wet towel to mop up the tiniest fragments. My dress is now damp and dusty at the hem, and my underarms are slick with perspiration. On my feet again, I wipe my forehead with the back of my arm. Josef sweeps methodically, head down, broom bristles scraping the floor.
“I think that’s the last of it,” I say. “Do you think we try to save this towel with the fragments, or can we just throw the whole thing away? Josef?”
He stops sweeping and raises his eyes to mine. “You look beautiful in your dress.”
I startle. “You don’t have to say it now.”
“You were beautiful in your dress at the wedding, and sweeping up broken dishes in your apron you’re even more beautiful. You have to know that.”
He extends his hand, and my face flushes until I realize he’s beckoning not for my hand but for the glass-filled towel, tossing it in the trash bin. “We’ll throw it away.”
“Josef.”
“I’ll finish the rest of the cleanup on my own.” He plunges his hands back into the soapy water.
“No.”
“It’s fine.”
“No,” I say, making a decision. “Let’s go dance.” He starts to protest again, but I’m already untying my apron. “Enough, Josef. Enough.”
I’m saying enough with washing the dishes, but I’m also saying enough with your pulling back. Enough with your deciding when we’re done talking and when you want to tell me you prefer to keep to yourself and when you want to tell me I’m beautiful. Enough with that. I won’t put up with it anymore. I hold out my hand, firmly. “This is your last chance to come and dance. If I put my hand down, I’m not asking again. Ever. I’m not asking anything of you ever again.”
He has to think about it; I see him calculating the price of either move. Only when I’ve let my hand drop a centimeter does he take his from the sink, soapy and dripping,
and accept my outstretched palm.
The water trickles from his hand down onto my own knuckles, past my wrist, but I don’t think it’s the drip that makes me shiver.
Back in the main room, the musicians have put away their instruments, and someone’s turned on a phonograph instead. It’s not traditional wedding music anymore, but band music, bright and bubbly with the sound of brass horns. I don’t know how to dance to it, but neither, it seems, do a lot of people. Two of the Canadian workers are giving a demonstration in the middle of the room, and then others clumsily follow their lead as best they can. Josef looks relieved; he’ll be far from the only beginner on this dance floor.
He puts one arm around my waist as the Canadians are doing. It makes my skin jolt, but it’s also awkward, trying to figure out how our bodies should fit together amid a sea of people while music blasts in the background. Josef, it becomes clear after a few minutes of dancing, has terrible rhythm. The steps are simple, but he can’t seem to start on the right beat. I’m trying not to laugh at him, but then I can’t help it. And instead of being annoyed, he’s laughing, too, throwing his hands in the air and exaggerating every clumsy step.
Is this what a date would be like? Is this what it would have been like if I’d met Josef at school or a social club? Is this what it could still be like if we could have a relationship that wasn’t colored by my pain or his?
“Come over here.” I pull him to the corner of the room, behind a rack where people have hung jackets, where we won’t bother anyone else. “Watch my feet,” I say. “The third and fourth steps are quicker. It goes slow, slow, quick-quick.”
He nods his head down to watch my feet, and then I nod my head down to offer more guidance, and then our foreheads bump together.
And suddenly we are kissing.
AS SOON AS OUR LIPS MEET, MY HEART JOLTS; MY HEAD FEELS dizzy.
And then Josef abruptly pulls his head back. For a moment I wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. Does he not want this? But then I feel his heartbeat, heavy against my chest, and realize it’s just that he felt the jolt, too, and we’re both overwhelmed. When he leans in again, it’s with intention. He cups his hands behind my head and strokes my cheek with his thumb, and I lean forward. Our lips meet more softly this time, less clumsily, and so slowly time has stopped.
