by Monica Hesse
But of course he wasn’t allowed to be buried in peace. Of course he wouldn’t have been allowed to go into the earth draped in an expensive-looking jacket that the Nazis could have sold or stolen or searched through. Someone would have had to undress him, to take and sort those clothes. Another prisoner.
Another prisoner who was also a little boy. My brother was gone, but in the end, his story wasn’t.
I left pieces of myself in that car. I left pieces I will never get back. I left them unwillingly, as my mind forced itself to block away those impossible, impossible minutes. I left them willingly for my own protection, because remembering that story would have demolished every reason I had to survive.
And beyond all reason, beyond any possible explanation, I still did want to survive.
He’s in the library. I wondered if he would go here. It’s where I would have gone if I were him, after what happened at dinner. The book of fairy tales isn’t out anymore. But Abek is sitting there, at the little chair at the little table, his hands tucked underneath his legs. It’s the seated position of a little boy. His face looks like it could be a hundred.
“Abek,” I say, and then immediately qualify it in my mind. The boy I keep calling Abek. The boy who cannot actually be Abek. I don’t have anything else to call him.
That’s what I should ask him: What should I call you? Where did you come from? What is your real name?
He looks up at me with dull, heavy eyes. “I thought about leaving,” he says. “After you said you’d come here and found the book, I thought maybe it would be better if I just left right away.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I should, though, right? I should just go?”
Now is when I should say yes. He should go. This boy should go away and leave me. But I am exhausted by so much unspeakable sadness. And so, when I open my mouth, what comes out is, “Tell me a story.”
He looks at me, confused. “From the book of fairy tales?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
I pull up the other chair, sit down in it, scrape it to the table. My first impulse is to fold my hands so they won’t shake, but I worry that will look too businesslike. Instead, I lay them flat on the table. Palms up. I have nothing left to hide.
“Tell me a story you make up,” I say. “One that I haven’t heard before, a new fairy tale. Tell me—tell me a story about a little boy that has a happy ending.”
We stare at each other. I think he can tell what I’m asking, but I’m not sure. I think I know what I’m asking, but I’m honestly not sure of that, either.
“Once upon a time,” he begins, but his voice is thin and wavering, so he clears his throat and starts again. “Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost everyone.”
He looks up at me. Is this what you wanted? his eyes ask, and I nod. Go on.
“The boy saw everyone he loved die in front of him. A mother and a grandfather who were killed as soon as they got to Birkenau. An uncle who one day couldn’t get up to work and the next day didn’t get up at all. A father who screamed in pain for days before he finally closed his eyes. And the boy wondered, was bringing his father water while he was sick the right thing to do, or did it only keep him alive longer; did it only make his suffering last?
“And finally—and finally, the boy lost his sister.”
He tries to blink back tears, and his voice catches, and then he doesn’t try to hold back the tears, he just lets them come.
“He lost an older sister. Before she died, she still managed to send notes to him from the other side of camp. She still tried to save rations for her little brother, even when keeping them might have saved her. She stayed alive so much longer than it seemed possible, so long it seemed like she might survive. But she couldn’t survive. In the end, she just couldn’t. The last note he got was from her bunkmate saying she was gone.”
My own eyes are prickling because it’s not my story but it is my story. It’s unfamiliar and familiar all at once. He starts again.
“Once upon a time, that boy, who was all alone, heard of another sister, and he wondered if maybe two people could be family again. He read a story about the Lederman family. He read it, and he thought it sounded like his own family. And the whole time he was in the camps, he would think of the Ledermans. He would take out their story and read it, again and again. He would pretend that maybe they had survived even though his family hadn’t, and he could go be a part of them. Maybe what he realized is that all families are very similar, the ones who love one another. He thought, the Lederman sister who had written the story must love her brother very much.
“And so once upon a time, after all the rest of his family died, that boy decided that if he lived through the war, he would try to find this family.”
“So he did,” I whisper.
“So he did.” He furtively wipes a tear from the corner of his eye.
“If that sister had found her own brother, he would have left her alone,” he continues. “If the Lederman family already had one another, he wouldn’t have bothered them. He didn’t even expect it to work. It was just a quest, just a reason to keep going.
“And then, as soon as he succeeded, he started to realize what a mistake he’d made. How dangerous it had been, and how stupid, and—and how unfair it had been. But then he didn’t know how to tell the truth without making things worse, because for such a long time, thinking about finding a new family is what had kept him going. And he thought that the sister might feel the same way. She might have been as alone as he was.”
This boy wasn’t trying to torment me. He wasn’t trying to get money from me. He wasn’t trying to get a passport from me. He was trying to get a family from me. He was trying to grab onto something small that would make his days the smallest bit more bearable.
I look at the defeated boy, sitting on his chair in the library, and I see choices spreading out in front of me.
The muslin cloth from Abek’s jacket is tucked in my pocket. I could pull it out now. I could shake it at him, angrily, or throw it in his face. I could get up and leave, or I could tell him to.
But as we are sitting here at this table, two desperately, desperately lonely people, what I keep thinking is this: It is its own kind of miracle. For the boy who found my muslin letter, years ago, to have managed to keep it all this time. And for him to then come and look for me, after the war. And for him to then hear about another letter that I wrote, three years later and hundreds of miles away, that I pinned on a board in the middle of a camp where all the children were looking for something.
For me to have met the nun in a convent who happened to be in charge that day, who happened to remember a boy that sounded like my brother. For me to have met a Russian commander who told me about the existence of Foehrenwald. For me to have invited an old family friend to that dinner, who spoke Russian and could help translate.
To bring me to this moment, a hundred things had to happen in order, and they all happened.
None of these are the miracles I was looking for. But they’re miracles nonetheless.
The boy in front of me looks at me with such desperate, hungry eyes.
I swallow. “What was the boy’s name? In your story, what is his name?”
His mouth sets in a firm line; he barely hesitates before he answers. “His name is Abek.”
“Before that. Before that, what was his name?”
“His name used to be Łukasz. But only at the beginning of the story. By the end of the story, it is Abek.”
“It’s not really a happy story,” I tell him.
“You didn’t say it had to be a happy story. You just said it had to have a happy ending.”
“A happy ending,” I repeat.
The boy in front of me is still waiting for an answer, and here is what I find myself thinking:
I am thinking, I have done it, without even meaning to. I thought after the war was over, I would find my brother and we would find a new
home, and only then, after all that, would we begin to build our family again, we would complete our alphabet.
But I ended up building it on the way. Most of it, I completed along the way.
A is for Abek.
B is for Baba Rose. No. B isn’t for Baba Rose any longer. Baba Rose is gone. B is for—B can be for Breine, effervescent and hopeful, planning her beautiful wedding inside a refugee camp. And C is for Chaim, her timid Hungarian groom.
D is for Dima, who saved me, taking me to the hospital and then taking me home to Sosnowiec.
E is for Esther, kind and steady, applying rouge to the cheeks of her protesting friend.
F is for Foehrenwald, where Esther and Breine and all of them were forced to live, and where none of them had been before, and where all of them tried to make it a home anyway.
G is for Gosia, Aunt Maja’s friend, who survived, and who will always be a connection to my past.
H can be for Hannelore, the little girl loved by the family she calls stepparents, and I can be for Inge, the mother she’ll never stop looking for.
J is for Josef.
K is Commander Kuznetsov, bringing a bottle of vodka, sending me to Foehrenwald.
L is for the Lederman family, the Chomickis and the Ledermans, and all the people in the family, because even though they are gone, I will carry their name and history forever: my mother, my father, beautiful Aunt Maja, Baba Rose.
Ł is for Łukasz. A boy who was not part of the Lederman family. Who eventually wished he was.
M is for Miriam, whom I barely knew but who was also looking for her own sister, who wrote letter after letter after letter.
N is for the nothing-girls, trying to become something again.
O is for Mr. Ohrmann, traveling the continent, trying to sew families back together as best as he can.
P is for Palestine, Eretz Israel, which could be our future.
R is for Ravid, trying to organize his people to go there, even when it seems impossible.
S is for Sosnowiec. I will make S always be for Sosnowiec, because you can’t erase where you’ve come from, and nobody else can erase it, either, even when they change the name and tear down the street signs.
Ś is for Uncle Świętopełk, an old man who can carry memories of the past, from long before this terrible thing happened to us, and who can say he is still alive after the terrible things finally ended.
T is for Sister Therese, the nun who gave me hope.
U is for Nurse Urbaniak, the nurse who gave me bread.
V is for Mrs. Van Houten, an old woman who volunteered to walk a young woman she barely knew to her groom on the evening of her wedding, and who represents the tiny, tender kindnesses we have tried to give to one another. V, even though it doesn’t even exist in the Polish alphabet, typically, and neither does Q and neither does X, but I am meeting people who exist outside of my alphabet now; my alphabet is new.
W is for the Wölflin family, who represent the larger, heroic kindnesses. The people who took in children, who risked their own lives.
X is to x things out. To cross out the things I’ll forget on purpose. Some things are okay to forget on purpose.
Y is for Mrs. Yost, trying to run Foehrenwald. And for all the other people trying to run all the other places in this terrible land after the war.
Z is for Zofia.
Here is what I am thinking, sitting in this makeshift library across from a boy whose life has been every bit as hard as mine.
I think we must find miracles where we can. We must love the people in front of us. We must forgive ourselves for the things we did to survive. The things we broke. The things that broke us.
I choose my next words so very, very carefully.
“Maybe I could meet Łukasz one day,” I say. “Not right now if he doesn’t want to. But one day. Maybe one day he can tell me more of his story.” I stand and extend my hand.
His face fills with the most fragile hope. “Does that mean—”
“Yes, Abek.” My brother’s name, spoken out loud, carries so much in it now. It’s an offering, it’s an acceptance, it’s a lie, it’s a goodbye. I clear my throat and start again. “Yes. It means that for now, we should go home.”
Epilogue
London, 1946
IT’S ALMOST TIME. ABEK AND I HAVE SAID THIS ENOUGH TO EACH other that it’s become a joke. Don’t worry; we’re almost there, he said when we rode in the back of the truck and I was desperate to use the bathroom, and then we ended up being in the truck for nearly three more hours as we were driven through Germany and then through France, past checkpoints and through demolished cities. Don’t worry; we’re almost to the front of the line, I consoled him as we waited for hours to have our papers processed, but then the aid workers changed shifts and we had to keep waiting. Now almost has become the joke for “never,” and we say it all the time. The tire is almost fixed. I would almost eat a live octopus.
But now we really are almost there, I think. Because as we stand near the dock, smelling the brininess of the air while the salt chaps my lips, the ship has begun sounding its horn. The people around us—the hundreds of other people clutching suitcases—hear it, too, and they all begin to chatter.
Ottawa. This is the name of the place we’re going, the place where the local Jewish federation has sponsored us and the other families lucky enough to be selected in the lottery. We’d pulled out a map, traced our fingers along the southern border of Canada, found the city in the east, on the border of a province called Ontario.
“How are your feet?” I ask Abek, because his shoes are too big for much walking, it turns out, and we didn’t layer on extra pairs of socks soon enough to prevent them from blistering.
“Almost okay,” he says.
“Really, almost?” I ask, concerned.
“They’re fine, I promise,” he reassures me.
I wish I’d taken some of the things from the closet in my family’s apartment when I left Sosnowiec—the sewn mementos, the memories of a previous life. I would have, if I’d realized I was leaving for good. Now in my valise, I have changes of clothes, and needles and thread, and a new pair of sewing shears that someone, incredibly, sent over in a donation box. Nicer, even, than what my family’s factory once had, with blades of clean, polished steel. We’re all traveling light. We’re all carrying just enough energy to start over.
Maybe one day I can write to Gosia and ask her to send the heirlooms. Maybe one day I’ll have a new life that will allow me to make space for the previous one.
In my valise, I also have a square of graying cloth, cut out from a shirt that I’d found on the doorstep of my cottage in Foehrenwald the morning after my last conversation with Josef. I’d spent the previous night trying to decide what I was going to do. How do you measure forgiveness—who deserves it, who can dispense it? How do you measure whether someone is punishing themselves enough? I debated whether I was going to tell Mrs. Yost, or whether it was possible she already knew. Whether I’d tell Breine and Esther, at least.
But I woke up that morning, and the shirt was on my doorstep, and Josef wasn’t. He’d left. So I didn’t have to decide whether to forgive him. I only got to decide that his absolution wouldn’t be my job. It made me relieved, and it makes me sad.
I think about him more than I wish I did. I wonder where he is and if there’s a world in which I’d see him again.
I kissed Breine and Esther and Chaim goodbye several weeks after that, as they left to find their own new start on their own boat. I had explained to them why we wouldn’t be joining them. Abek and I wanted something brand-new, something we’d chosen entirely on our own. A new decision for a new family.
And in a way, we found the most comfort in choosing something the most unknown. A place we knew almost nothing about, where there would be no reminders of pain and no expectations to live up to or down to. We read a book about ice hockey. We asked one of the Canadian volunteers at Foehrenwald to sing us the national anthem.
The boat is an ocean liner with three smokestacks, the size of a floating town almost. The gangway is long and zigzags up the side, and at the beginning, passengers stop and hand over papers, waiting to be checked off a manifest.
Abek walks onto the gangway ahead of me but turns back when he realizes I haven’t followed. “Are you coming?”
“Almost,” I say, and then, quickly, “I mean, yes.”
I take his outstretched hand and move forward. The boards sway a little under my feet, but I keep moving forward.
A Note on History and Research
I WROTE THIS NOVEL, MY THIRD SET IN THE WORLD WAR II ERA, because after five years spent researching those horrible years, I realized that most of the books I’d read and documentaries I’d seen all finished at the same place: the end of the war. They ended with the liberation of a concentration camp. The disbanding of an army unit. A celebration in the streets. There was much less about what happened in the weeks and months after the war, when an entire continent had to find a way to recover from the suffering it had experienced and the atrocities it had committed.
Several years before, on a somber vacation, I’d taken a long, meandering train ride from Germany through the Czech Republic and into Poland. The trip began in Munich, where I visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp, and it ended in Kraków, where I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous Nazi death camp of the Holocaust, where more than one million people were murdered.
Late one night I realized, sickened, that my comfortable passenger train was following a route that a different train could have followed in 1941 or 1942, packed with terrified people heading to their deaths. My train made a brief stop in a city called Sosnowiec, and the name stuck in my brain. I came home and read a little about it, and when I began writing this book, I set about trying to re-create, as best as I could, what might have happened to a young woman who had been taken from that town at the beginning of the war, and who now had to return to it.
