sharp, leather-boring tool he was using before. He doesn’t pick it up but leaves his hands on the handle, a warning that he’ll use it if he needs to.
Watching him, something pushes in on my brain. A thought, a memory, trying to break through my spiraling, to bring me back to myself. Mr. Mueller. Sosnowiec in the summer. Heat, the hottest days, standing in lines. My father.
Do I know this man? Surely I don’t—I couldn’t—but something I’ve just seen him do reminds me of—what? Sosnowiec in summer, standing. The images are too vague for me to grab onto; I’m not even sure if they’re real.
I replay everything that just happened, every moment since I first saw Mr. Mueller get up to take my valise, to this moment, now, as he dabs his bloody eyebrow with the hem of his shirt while warily eyeing the courtyard. But it’s lost. Whatever I thought seemed familiar about him has disappeared again, if it ever existed at all.
I bite back frustration. Just when I congratulated myself on making it all the way to this camp, just when I dared to think I was showing progress. Why is my brain so broken and battered? Why does it betray me?
Back in the middle of the courtyard, the bigger man is on his hands and knees. The two friends he’d been standing with rush over, grab him under the arms, and hoist him to his feet.
I look up. Mr. Mueller is back in front of me again, his hand outstretched. There’s a scrape across his knuckles. His shirt is smeared with dust, two buttons have been ripped off, and his breast pocket hangs, half-ripped. He motions with his hand again.
“Your luggage.”
He’s taller than me by an inch. His eyes, which I’d thought just gray, I can now see have a pebbly mix with brown in them, too, a dark, flinty color that’s hard to read. I should be disgusted by him now, after watching him start the fight. The pull in my stomach should have disappeared. It hasn’t, though. I’m cautious around him, but I still can’t stop staring.
“My luggage?” I repeat dumbly.
“Mrs. Yost asked me. To carry. Your luggage.” He says it very slowly this time, with one eyebrow raised.
“Oh. But you don’t have to,” I start. “Not after—”
“I said I would,” he says simply, taking the bag before I can protest again. He doesn’t wait for me to follow, and when I don’t see Mrs. Yost around to provide instructions to the contrary, I quickly dart after him.
He weaves through rows of cottages, checking once to make sure I can keep up, but not again. I speed up my steps so I can walk next to him, panting a little from the effort.
“Did that man do something to you?” I ask, breathless.
Not breaking stride. “Didn’t you just see the fight? I’d say he did something to me.”
“Yes, what I meant was—”
“He bruised my chest. And he smells like piss, and he was all over me, so he probably made me smell like piss, too.” He stresses the word piss. To shock me, I think, or repel me, to get me to stop asking questions.
As we hurry, I try to pay attention to the route and everything along it: A wooden structure where women carry out baskets of laundry. A larger building, with a sign reading VOCATIONAL TRAINING. Foehrenwald is more like a town than I even realized.
“What I meant—and I think you know it—was, did that man do something to you before the fight?” I clarify. “Was there a reason you hit him? Or do you try to beat up all piss-smelling things?”
His mouth twitches. “Piss-smelling things? What is a piss-smelling thing that I could beat up?”
“A—a goat. You could beat up a goat.”
“A goat,” he repeats flatly.
“Or a latrine itself,” I say stubbornly. “A latrine would be a very piss-smelling thing for you to punch.”
“How, exactly, would I punch a latrine?”
“Wetly,” I say. I can’t explain why his indifference is making me so bold, but I feel the need to show him that I’m not cowed or intimidated by his swearing or his fight. “If you punched a latrine, it would probably splash.”
Mr. Mueller laughs, sharp and staccato, as though the sound and the act surprise him. It’s a nice laugh, wry but rich, but then it stops almost immediately. He’s arranged his mouth back into a serious expression before I even smile myself, as if he’s hoping I won’t notice the laugh at