used the two ends of the scarf to wipe my eyes, several times and very quickly, so no one would notice. Of course no one was watching me, but I didn’t want to notice it either. I was all too aware that there’s an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so. I told myself that my tears were due to the cold, and I believed myself.
The snow-white handkerchief was made of the most delicate batiste. It was old, a nice piece from the time of the tsars, with a hand-embroidered silk ajour border. The openwork between the stitches was very precise, and there were little rosettes in the corners. I hadn’t seen anything that beautiful in a long time. At home, the beauty of normal everyday objects wasn’t worth mentioning. And in the camp it was better to forget such beauty. But the beauty of this handkerchief got to me. It made my heart ache. Would he ever come home, this old Russian woman’s son, this man who was himself but also me. To keep these thoughts at bay I started singing. For the sake of both of us, I sang the Cattle Car Blues:
The daphne’s blooming in the wood
The ditches still have snow
The letter that you sent to me
Has filled my heart with woe
The sky was running by—plump, cushiony clouds. Then the early moon looked at me with the face of my mother. The clouds moved one cushion underneath her chin and another one just behind her right cheek. Then they pulled that cushion back out through her left cheek. And I asked the moon: Is my mother now so frail. Is she sick. Is our house still there. Is she still at home, or is she in a camp as well. Is she even still alive. Does she know that I’m alive, or is she already weeping for her dead son whenever she thinks of me.
That was my second winter in the camp, we weren’t allowed to write letters home, or send any sign of life. The birch trees in the Russian village were bare, under their branches the snowy rooftops looked like crooked beds in an open-air barrack. And in the early twilight, the birch skin showed a different paleness than during the day, and a different whiteness from the snow. I saw the wind swimming gracefully through the branches. A small, wood-brown dog came trotting toward me down the path along the woven willow fence. He had a triangular head and long legs, straight and thin as sticks. White breath came flying out of his mouth as though he were eating my handkerchief while drumming with his legs. The little dog ran past me as if I were nothing more than the shadow of the fence. And he was right: on my way home to the camp I was just another ordinary Russian object in the twilight.
No one had ever used the white batiste handkerchief, and I didn’t either. I kept it in my suitcase to the last day, as a kind of relic from a mother and a son. And eventually took it home.
A handkerchief like that has no business in the camp. Each year I could have traded it at the market for something to eat, for sugar or salt, or even millet. The temptation was there, and the hunger was blind enough. What kept me from doing so was the belief that the handkerchief was my fate. And once you let your fate pass out of your hands, you’re lost. I was convinced that my grandmother’s parting sentence I KNOW YOU’LL COME BACK had turned into a handkerchief. I’m not ashamed to say that the handkerchief was the only person who looked after me in the camp. I’m certain of that even today.
Sometimes things acquire a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness we don’t expect from them.
At the head of my bed, behind my pillow, is my trunk, and underneath my pillow, wrapped in the bread cloth, is the bread I’ve saved from my mouth, precious beyond belief. One morning I heard a squeal inside the pillow, right under my ear. I lifted my head and looked in wonder: between the bread cloth and the pillow was a bright pink tangle the size of my ear. Six blind mice, each smaller than a child’s finger. With skin like silk stockings that twitch because they’re living flesh. Mice born out of nothingness, a gift for