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