Kneel! A man with one bad eye drove his knife into Papaji’s foot.
The pain was unbearable, and he fell the dusty ground. Kill me, for there is no decision I will make for you.
Cut his throat.
No, we should make him Muslim where it counts.
The group argued about what they should do with him. In the confusion, they did not see him take out his kirpan, nor did they see him grab the smallest man of the group, a boy of fourteen who was taunting him with a stick, and press his blade to his throat.
Drop your weapons, or I’ll kill him.
They all turned.
One of them shook his pistol at him. You won’t do it. Look, bháí, he’s too young to die.
Too young to die, but old enough to murder and loot? You are insane. He spit and pressed the knife to the boy’s throat. The boy winced. He knew he was no killer, and he let the boy go.
Aaqib went to him and said, Just stay down, bháí, and kneel.
But before he knew it, Aaqib hit him in the head with the butt of the gun, and he fell. They weren’t murderers or thieves. It was the war that had poisoned everyone.
Papaji checked the blade for sharpness, and a drop of blood appeared on his pointer finger. He heard someone in the house, and then the sliding door opened. It was Paul, who pulled up a chair beside him.
“Ikpaul, I saw the results.”
“What?”
“I called PMI. Didn’t get anywhere.”
“Why did you call them?”
“Someone had to.”
“Papaji, this is not your business. You can’t just come into my house after so many years and pretend that everything is okay. It’s not okay.” Paul stood and paced along the patio.
“Puttar, I haven’t been a good father to you.” Papaji looked at his son and felt as though he were seeing him for the first time. What had he done?
“It’s fine, Papaji.”
“No, it’s not fine. I need to say some things, please. When I wasn’t there to protect your mother during the long journey, I blamed myself. The war left me bitter. I could not move on from that, ever. I was weak. You—you are strong. You protect your family, your city, everything. You work hard to make sure that we are all safe. Puttar, I can learn from you.”
Paul’s lips parted just a touch, and after a large absence of words he said, “Thank you.”
“We need to do something about the water.”
“Yes, we do.”
Papaji held out his kirpan to Paul. “This should have been yours years ago. To pass on to Vic, samajhna?”
Paul took the kirpan from Papaji’s hands. The rain fell like gentle tears, as though nature were washing away their past regrets, cleansing both of them.
Maija
On an average day, somewhere between past and present, Maija’s mind rested uncomfortably, as though at any moment a breeze might come to push her from the precipice of reality. Her perspective had too many elements to interpret. It was maddening: the visions and her lack of control over them, the conversation at the Finch home that didn’t make sense, the conversations in her mind. This problem of neither here nor there became a larger and more persistent problem when she’d found a pile of letters neatly tucked away in Isabella’s secret box beneath her bed.
Maija existed alone in an unusual space of uncertainty. The ways in which the past crept into her mind and others’ futures she’d never truly understood. She’d always hated this part of herself, the one that made her different, with every inch of her being. She’d thought it was useless until, of course, she came across each and every letter her mother and father had written to each other over the year they’d been separated during the war. She realized her father’s vision of the future had been as precarious as her own: Her father had been an unwilling participant in a vicious war, her mother a vulnerable yet strong woman who’d escaped an impossible situation with only her wits.
Maija read the first few letters with her back to the bedroom door, ready to stash the evidence of her tertiary snooping as soon as another person came home. Soon, the words cascaded over her and made her physical surroundings disappear.
Janvāris 45, Poznan
Dearest Heinrich:
Tonight I can only write about small things. If I think about sadness or the world around both of us, I will not be able to continue. The snow covers the city like a shroud on a corpse. Your package arrived yesterday. I am shocked it came at all. Poznan, bombed and gutted by German artillery, barely holds together for us the remaining survivors. There was no note inside your package, only cigarettes and money. These will help me leave this dangerous place. Thank you, my darling. This flat is the only one left standing, which means they will come soon and count the dead, then jail the rest. I am vulnerable—you know why. I only have to open my mouth and they know my religion and my country. I am growing worried that you have not received my letters, as the last was returned to me here in Posen. I pray that you are okay. Charlotte said the front collapsed and took with it many soldiers. I will leave tomorrow by train if they are still running. The Russians bombed the railway coming in and the Germans bombed the tracks leaving. I am caught between a hungry lion and a wolf. They say they will both meet soon. Whenever I feel cold and hungry, I think about the dinner we had together on our farm last spring. Do you remember the duck, the roasted vegetables, the bread and wine? My love, I hope that we can meet again after and make a new life together. Perhaps have the child we’ve always wanted. Though I am not sure if I want to bring a soul into a world that allows a hell like this unfold. When you think of me, think of how I love you. Think of how our love surpasses this nightmare. Think of the bench we sat on together in Riga along the Daugava River. You brought candies and carnations. It was that moment that I knew we would be married. When you slid your hand into mine, I fell in love with you forever. My dear heart, I will see you in this world or the next. I am going to move north and hope to slip past these devils. Look for me there. I pray for your safety.
Love eternal, your wife, Hermione
Maija sat with her heavy heart in her chest, her head in her hands. Their love, so clear here on the page, was something she’d never known.
Februāris 45, East Prussia
Dearest Mina,
I write this from a bed in the infirmary. I am on the Eastern front. The winter is hell. I was caught in a firefight. My foot—it’s badly wounded. I write this in the dark, my darling. Another officer promised to get this to you. You see—I know they will try to execute me in the morning. I saw it. I heard them speaking in my mind. I know you might think it’s crazy, but I know. I just know. They want to rid themselves of the injured. I am leaving here tonight, with my friend who is also injured. I don’t know how far we will get in this winter, don’t know if I’ll ever set my eyes on your beauty again. I did see us together with a daughter, in a farm in a place untouched by this war. Perhaps it is also our future. What use is the future if we do nothing to change our path? If I survive this, if we survive, let’s leave this insanity behind. I can only hope.
For now, forever, love, Heinrich
He had the sight. Maija had always resented the move to America. Resented her father for dying when she was so young. And now, she saw that his decision to uproot them all and move to America was based on a premonition, a promising future he’d seen. She knew her father had been wounded on the front, his foot nearly shot to pieces. But that was all she’d heard of the myth because Oma had never been very forthcoming with details, understandably. Through the letters, Maija learned that his companion did not survive. She learned she shared her father’s sight. She learned that he was the one who wanted to come to America and never be forced to fight in another war against his will again.
Maija stood and vacuumed the room slowly, methodically, as though she were protecting each moment in the past. Oma’s memories had become more vivid in her mind lately. If only her mother had the sight; perhaps it would have helped her find freedom sooner. Perhap
s she could have avoided the DP camps and the fights, the terror and the hunger, the loss of all of her family members and most of her friends. How easy we move from the precarious past, Maija thought. How soon we forget. Now it made sense why Oma was so adamant about the past, her past, never forgetting—and yet how difficult it was for her to talk about it at all. Blindness would soon steal her vision. Maija alone would have to see for both of them.
She heard her mother return from her afternoon walk. “Ma? Want some tea?” she said as she went to the kitchen to prepare the water.
“Sure, mine darlink. Thank you.”
It was over tea and black bread that Maija knew she had to enter territory that had been off limits her entire life.
“We don’t talk. We never talk. Not about the hard things, Ma. I have been carrying them for so long. Things I don’t understand. Things I need to understand. Ma, I need you to tell me, tell us.”
“I don’t want to talk about za past, neh? It’s done.”
“It’s not done. Not for me. I see things. Useless things. And then I see things that are important. The past—your past, I think. But I don’t know what it means. Please.”
Oma pursed her lips and seemed to think hard about something before she spoke. “Is Izjah home?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so.” Maija projected her motherly call to Isabella, and before long her daughter appeared.
“Izjah, sit down here, neh?”
Maija saw her daughter beside her mother, and for the first time saw the resemblance that rested in Isabella’s well-defined lips and high cheekbones. There they sat, three women of three generations, all drinking the same tea. Was this the miracle she’d been waiting for?
“I know you have questions, Izjah. So, maybe you should ask them now. It’s poison in your blood when you cannot speak your mind.”
Maija watched her daughter find courage, then confidence. “Oma, are you Jewish?”
“Yes, Izjah. Yes, we are.”
“Why did you hide it for so long?”
“I hid it from even myself, neh? Everyone died for this. Mine sisters, mine mother and father, even mine husband died eventually from za wounds, neh? Zoh, these things go deeper inside. Far under our skin and bones and in our blood. When we came to America, I decided it would be easier to keep hiding. It doesn’t change my blood, neh?”
Isabella nodded carefully. Maija bit her lip and said, “Ma, why didn’t you tell me Papa had the sight?”
Oma dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
Maija continued, “It would have been easier for me all along, knowing that I wasn’t alone.”
“He didn’t want you to know. It vas za last thing he asked of me before he died. You were too young to remember. It wasn’t cancer, darlink; he died of a full heart. He’d set out to bring us here. He set out to care for us. To have you. Once he did these things, he vas old. He vas full.”
Maija reached out her hand across the table and held her mother’s hand. For the first time in her life she, too, felt a full heart—but her head filled with questions.
Isabella
Isabella counted her steps as she walked down the busy hall toward the theater. Tewks had called an emergency rehearsal today, as he’d decided they were all far from prepared for opening day. He also wanted to speak with her before rehearsal. “One, two, three, four, five,” she said under her breath. Maybe counting only worked when trying to sleep, not when avoiding nausea. “Six, seven, eight, nine,” she said, and on ten she ran into the girl’s bathroom.
Her clammy hands pushed open a stall, and she assumed the familiar and uncomfortable position in front of a toilet. The bathroom cleared out. Could she still be feeling the effects of the flu, or was this something more? When she was through, she rinsed her mouth at the sink and took a sip. The cool water felt good.
Tewks was going to fire her as soon as she walked into his office. Could a teacher fire a student? Isabella’s mind raced. Her new interest in the play would fall flat because someone had set her up. When Mrs. Stein forced her to audition for the play, she would have taken any way out. But since her discovery of her grandmother’s religious heritage, Isabella had renewed her interest in history. Her grandfather, Heinrich, fought in World Wars I and II. This was a statement she could recite, empty of empathy—a memorized slogan like, “I’m half Latvian and half Indian” or “Yes, my last name is Singh.” She had no idea what it meant to fight in a war, hold a gun, kill a person, lose a family member, or immigrate to a foreign country on which all your hopes and dreams had been pinned.
Before she knew it, she was standing at the door to the theater. Rehearsals had been cancelled when the flu broke out, and this would be the first time she’d seen Tewks since she was called to the principal’s office and told she didn’t deserve the lead role. She thought of what Oma would do in this situation. Isabella took a deep breath in, then let it out. She puffed up her chest, made her eyes squint. She needed to bring a gift for Tewks. There was a snack machine in the hallway, and from her backpack she scrounged up fifty cents. The only thing that cost a mere fifty cents in the machine was a packet of multi-flavored Life Savers. It looked meager beside the large chocolate cupcakes and candy bars, but it would have to do. Armed with attitude and candy, she opened the door.
It was dark inside, and the silence was heavy in the already insulated theater. She was the first to arrive, so she went to Tewks’s small office behind the stage to see if he was there. The door was open, but no one was inside. She hesitated for a few seconds with the doorknob in her sweaty hand, but instead of listening to doubt she pushed the door open completely.
“Mr. Tewkesbury? Hello?” she said to no one.
She’d never been inside his office before. It was warmly decorated, with an antique desk and comfortable-looking chairs. On the desk were photos and an old mug filled with lollipops and pens. The bookshelf held tons of books, and she picked up one and opened it, but before she could see if she recognized the title, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Miss Singh, looking for something?”
Isabella looked at her teacher and stuck out her fist with the Life Savers. He looked puzzled but took the candy and put it on his desk. “I am glad you are here. We need to talk. Take a seat.”
Isabella sat down. “Okay.”
“The principal told me they found oddities in your locker.” He seemed quietly angry.
“Oh, that stuff was mine. I keep things I find. It’s like—like—” Isabella searched for a harmless hobby—“scrapbooking. Just like scrapbooking.”
“Scrapbooking.”
“Why did they think to search my locker for anything in the first place?”
“Someone mentioned you were holding dangerous materials in your locker.”
“Who?”
“The note was anonymous.”
“Someone wants me to get kicked out of the play. I didn’t do anything wrong. Look, I’m telling the truth. Why can’t you believe me?”
Tewks removed his scarf and closed the door to his office. “I do believe you. I feel better having spoken with you, Isabella. I think we can continue rehearsing for the play now, right here.”
“Oh, but no one else is here.”
“We can do a read-through together. The group is waiting outside in the theater. Did you bring your script?”
Isabella suddenly was uncomfortable. Tewks’s chair stood between her and the door.
She stood. “I’m beginning to really like the play, Mr. Tewkesbury. It’s pretty cool, you know.”
He smiled but his expression did not change. “I’ll play Erik’s role, then, okay? Let’s begin with the first act, scene two.”
She didn’t move. That was the scene where they kissed.
“Samantha? Scene two.”
“I forgot my script.”
“I should have another one here somewhere.” He turned to his bookshelf.
“I am going to be sick.” She wasn’t sure if this was true, but she was sure a promise
of vomit would derail his momentum.
“Aren’t you feeling better? Remember what I told you, Isabella?” He moved closer. “Sometimes you just have to figure out a way to make do and not ruin the whole production.” He raised his hand to her face. “Now, what do you look like without these glasses?”
He grabbed them from her face, and she became nearly blind and utterly vulnerable. His face blurred before her, and she clutched at the corner of her backpack to stay connected to something familiar.
“Give them back.”
“Just a minute.”
“Now. Please,” she said firmly. She picked up her backpack, which was heavy with textbooks. She would swing it at him if he came any closer. If that didn’t work, she would try to kick him in the crotch.
“No need to be snippy. I just thought you could use some one-on-one instruction with the director. Other students would be jealous. Plenty of others could have had that role, Isabella. I picked you.” He handed her glasses to her.
She moved diagonally toward the door, and though he was standing before it, her quick movement forced him to get out of the way. She pushed the door open with the same force she’d used when she came in.
“Hey, Izzy! Hey!” Erik jogged up alongside her. “Where are you going?”
“Tewks is a jerk.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. What happened?” Erik held her arm gently, and they walked together along the hall to the exit and outside.
Isabella’s eyes dampened.
“Hey, don’t cry. Did he do something?” Erik puffed up his chest, then wiped her tears with the side of his hand. She looked up into his blue eyes. She realized that he was wearing cologne, and all she wanted to do was curl up against his chest and breathe.
“No. I don’t know.”
Balance of Fragile Things Page 21
