on a transport west to another camp in Germany. Those were the choices?”
Gosia looks uncomfortable. “Unless—”
“Unless what?” I ask sharply.
“Zofia. I loved Abek. You know I did. But he was so young. He was young, and the work was so hard, and so many people—”
“—And that is why it is lucky he was strong,” I interrupt. “Besides, I had organized something for him. A special position. He was valuable. I made sure he was useful.”
She sees my face. She sees my face, and her next words are careful. “If Salomon is right, then when the camp closed, the infirmary or on the transport are the most likely places he would have been.”
“We know he wasn’t in the infirmary,” I say. “So he was on that transport.”
“So he was on that transport,” she repeats slowly. “Of course he was.”
Commander Kuznetsov is a tall, thin man with gaunt cheeks but friendly, intelligent eyes. He doesn’t speak Polish, but he speaks fair German, which Gosia and I are fluent in but which Dima doesn’t speak at all. Gosia also knows some Russian, and between the four of us, we manage to limp along, languages changing every few sentences, an imitation of a dinner party.
The commander has never been to Poland before, he explains as we sit with plates in our laps, again on the floor. Dima spread a tablecloth between us, and he brought flowers, which are on the windowsill. He also made sure there was a bottle of vodka. The rest of the apartment is as it was when I walked in, peeled and abandoned, which the commander says is the point. He asked for the invitation because he wanted to know something about the region he’d been assigned to, he says, how we’re living and making do.
I made holishkes, with tinned tomatoes and the only meat available at the butcher: a graying, tough mutton. I tried to enjoy the cooking, with the army-issued pots Dima brought along. I tried to enjoy being in my family’s kitchen again.
“Zofia?” Dima says gently. “Commander Kuznetsov asked you a question.”
“Yes, it’s a traditional dish,” I say, pulling myself back into the conversation.
If Abek was sent to Germany, will he know how to get back? Where in Germany—the country is huge. Will he have been given the same letter I was, to allow him to board a train?
“We eat it at our harvest holiday sometimes,” Gosia adds because I’ve gone silent. “We also have, oh, apple cake and potato kugel.”
We eat it because it’s Abek’s favorite meal, I add to myself. We eat it on his birthday, and as I bought the ingredients, I hoped somehow I would be making it for him. That Salomon would have known where he was, and Gosia would have brought him home tonight.
“You have known Zofia’s family for a long time?” the commander asks Gosia, the more talkative of his dinner companions. “And what are you doing for work now?”
“I’m a nurse at a medical clinic. And yes. Zofia’s aunt and I went to the same primary school. I’ve known Zofia since she was born, which means—” She nudges my shoulder, tries to draw me into the discussion.
This isn’t how I wanted my first night home to be. This isn’t how I wanted anything to be.
“It means eighteen years, doesn’t it, Zofia?”
Dima looks at me, worried. This isn’t how he wanted the evening to go, either.
“I apologize, Commander,” I say quietly. “I’m very tired. As Dima might have told you, I’m looking for my younger brother. I had hoped he would be waiting for me here, but he wasn’t.”
The commander nods at me, but it’s Dima he speaks to next, in rapid-fire Russian I can see Gosia struggling to keep up with. By reading their faces, I think I make out the basics. He’s asked Dima whether my brother was in a camp, like me, and Dima has said he was. The conversation continues to the point that I can’t follow it, until Gosia at last cuts in.
“He says there are helpers. Organizations, I think he said,” she tells me.
“I know. I’ve talked to them; I’ve written letters.”
The men keep talking, and when Gosia cuts in the second time, her voice has an edge to it. “He says he wonders if Abek is in Munich.”
Dima and Commander Kuznetsov stop midsentence and look at her. The commander seems humbled, and he switches to German. “I apologize for leaving you out of the conversation,” he tells me.
“Why would he have gone to