Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,101

it down in one particular way, the other versions slip through the cracks. All the possibilities lost to the sands of time.

One thing I remember vividly: when I gave Pepik his mother’s diamond watch, he got a particular look in his eye. It was as though time had begun again, as though for him it was not too late.

I don’t know much about Pepik’s childhood. He himself remembered very little about his life in Prague or about the journey that brought him from Scotland to here. By the time I found the letters in the archive in Glasgow, both of the Millings were dead. There is no official record of their ever having a son of their own; it was common enough for a childless couple to sign up to be foster parents. But there is still the question of the letter from Pavel, of the Arthur referred to within.

Another thing we never figured out is why Pepik was moved to the orphanage. This again, unfortunately, was far from uncommon. It was wartime, money was scarce, people were displaced for all sorts of reasons. The memories Pepik had of the orphanage were few and far between, but they were clear, he said, even vivid. It is to protect his privacy that I have not included them here.

What I’m telling you—haltingly, I realize—is that this is just one way it might have happened. Nothing is certain, save what meets us at the end. After Pepik died I learned the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. It doesn’t mention death but praises God and gives thanks. I marvel at this, at the faith woven into its words. I’m an old woman now and I can’t help but wonder. Who will pray for me when I’m gone?

I have tried, all these years, to see their faces. Not the images frozen in photos but their faces, their gestures, who they were. I would give almost anything—I would give anything—for a single memory of my father. The way he held a pen, the backs of his hands. To summon the sound of his voice. And my mother—the smell of her hair, damp after her bath; the weight of her arms pulling me in. In the end, though, all I have is a list of names and dates. And so I inscribe them here, the family I never knew. It might seem morose to end with the dead, but I am thinking of posterity. I don’t have to tell you the reason for this. Soon there’ll be nobody left to remember.

Rosa (Berman) Bauer 1885 – 1943

Pavel Bauer 1907 – 1943

Marta Meuller 1915 – 1946

Anneliese (Bondy) Bauer 1912 – 1943

Eliza Bauer 1939 – 1942

Alžběta (Bondy) Stein 1914 – 1943

Max Stein 1890 – 1943

Eva Stein 1937 – 1943

Vera Stein 1934 – 1943

Misha Bauer 1905 – 1943

Lore (Leverton) Bauer 1910 – 1943

Tomáš Bauer 1935 – 1941

Joseph (Pepik) Bauer 1933 – 2008

Anneliese (Meuller) Bauer 1940 –

THE TRAIN OF MEMORY SLEEPS ON ITS TRACKS. At night, in the station, the shadows gather around it, reaching out to touch its cool black sides. The train stretches back, far out of eyesight. Where it comes from is anyone’s guess.

At dawn the ghosts retreat, take their place as shadows in the corners of the lofty-domed station. The train sighs on its tracks, a traveller hoisting very heavy bags. We roll over in our beds; we cough, stretch a little; the train of memory starts to move forward. Slowly at first, but gathering speed. The landscape drifts by like the last wisps of a dream. In the early morning hours the train begins to move into the opposite of memory. Into a future time when someone will look back at us now, wondering what our days were like and why we did the things we did. Or why we did not act, as the case might equally be.

Someone will be unable to make our lives make sense.

The train has no answers, only forward momentum. We open our eyes; it is moving very quickly now. Moving always ahead. It never arrives.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to:

The Canada Council for the Arts

The Ontario Arts Council

The Toronto Arts Council

The Hadassah–Brandeis Institute

The EU’s Culture Programme and the Odyssey Program 2007

Le Réseau Européen des Centres Culturels de Rencontre

IMEC’s Abbaye d’Ardenne in Normandy, France

Schloss Bröllin in Pasewalk, Germany

The Milkwood Artist Residence in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Michael Crummey

Steven Heighton

Lucy Pick

Hanna Spencer

Sarah MacLachlan and everyone at House of Anansi Press

Mary-Anne Harrington at Headline in the UK

Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins in the US

Jacqueline Smit at Orlando/AW