Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,90

were darting from side to side.

“Why don’t I give you a moment.”

You nodded, grateful, and I headed for the door. When I reached the threshold, I looked back. You were still holding your head in your hands.

The distance you’d travelled was hard to imagine. The train trips, the boat rides. Later, the airplanes. And those, of course, were only the geographical trips. I don’t have to mention the other kinds of displacements, the other leaps you’d made. When I looked at you that day, you seemed so overwhelmed, a jet-lagged, bedraggled voyageur.

I left you alone to read your family’s letters. Went into my office and checked my email. I politely but firmly declined a request from a doctoral student looking for a supervisor in the field. Perhaps I was not polite. I was certainly firm. I could see you through the open door: you had leaned your cane against the wall, its handle stooped like your own shoulders. You sat down in front of the letters. “And so,” you said. When you finally flipped the file open, the action was fast and decisive, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

I forced my gaze back to the computer, where I read a notice about a department meeting three times, not registering anything. I don’t know why the secretary—Marsha? Melinda?—still sends me these things. She knows I’ve retired. When I looked back up, I saw two letters on the table in front of you, laid out one beside the other. I’d had the letters translated, and I could tell you were suspicious, lining the English up against the Czech, as if some mistake might be revealed in the space between. I called out, “Pepik!” You didn’t lift your head. “Joseph,” I said, remembering. “Are you . . . okay in there?”

You waved your hand in the air without looking up, as if you were shooing away a dog.

It pleased me a little, this offhand gesture, as though you knew me well, had known me forever.

When I came in half an hour later, your cheeks were wet with tears. I pretended not to notice.

“You can keep the file if you want,” I said. I was surprised to hear myself offer this; usually I just give out photocopies.

“Yes,” you said. “Please.” And then, “I have so many questions.”

“Shoot,” I said. But you only sat there with the thick manila file in your hands. You took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “These are just—” You looked up at me weakly.

“Heartbreaking?”

“Yes.”

I lifted my hand to brush a hair off your jacket but lowered it again, not wanting to seem patronizing.

“They loved me,” you said.

“Yes.”

“And they ended up . . .” Your voice trailed off. You gripped your cane as though it could support you even from your seated position. “What happened to the baby?” you asked. “The one from my photo.”

I hesitated, hating to be the bearer of more bad news.

“I don’t know for certain.”

You nodded. “Okay.”

We looked at each other for a long moment.

“You think she . . . ?” you began.

“I think—” But again I lost my nerve. I’ve had this conversation many times, but the cliché is true: it doesn’t get easier.

“Lisa,” you said. My head snapped up at my name. You were looking at me steadily, as though to reassure me—to reassure both of us—that whatever I had to say could not be that bad. “That baby—Is she you?”

“She isn’t,” I said. “I’m not.”

“What happened to her then?” you asked again.

There was no choice but to tell you the truth.

I answered. “That baby was killed.”

Most often they come looking for me.

Everyone has a story to tell, and the children of the Diaspora are no different. They want to be heard, like everyone else. Heard and understood. Even more so.

Years ago I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the second official Kindertransport reunion. At the opening banquet I gave my usual spiel, and when I got down from the podium I was practically mobbed. At a certain age we all become aware of our mortality, and suffice it to say that these people were already well past that age. Blue hair and dentures. Sour breath.

I know, I know—who am I to talk?

I booked enough interviews that weekend to fill my entire next book. It would be relatively easy to write—a summary of the transcriptions, a qualitative analysis using variables of selfhood and self-concept. And yet, as I gathered names and email addresses—or phone numbers, because many of my would-be subjects didn’t have