But obviously not news that concerns you. The name similarity must just be a clerical coincidence.”
“Just out of curiosity, though, what is the news? Is he… alive?”
“I believe he is,” Mr. Ohrmann affirms. “It turns out he wasn’t in any of the records—death, transfer, or liberation—because he’d actually escaped a few months before liberation. He and another boy.”
“So you’ve talked to Alek?”
“My colleague talked to the other boy. They didn’t stay together after the escape—it hadn’t been planned, and they didn’t even know each other before it. They were both assigned to work outside the camp, and the truck left them behind. They thought splitting up would give them each a better chance of surviving. The other boy didn’t know where Alek is now, but it answers the question of why he wasn’t in any records.”
“I didn’t know anyone escaped,” I say.
Mr. Ohrmann nods. “It’s incredibly rare.”
“How did you learn about it?”
“I happened to be talking to a colleague about your search, and he remembered an interview he’d conducted months ago. The notes were still in a file. The young man—Alek’s escape partner—mentioned Alek’s name. The young man was looking for him, too.”
“But his name was really Alek,” I confirm. “It wasn’t a misspelling; his name was really Alek after all, not Abek?”
Mr. Ohrmann looks pained. “We believe so. It’s a little complicated. The interview was conducted through an interpreter. The boy was Romanian, a language none of us speaks. He was getting confused by the foreign names.
“Anyway. This isn’t your concern now,” he finishes brightly. “Yours is a file I can close.”
“But it sounds like Alek Federman’s is one you’ll have to open? Will you still find him? Is anyone looking for him?”
“You can’t get caught up in everyone else’s searches,” Mr. Ohrmann warns me.
“I know; I’m just wondering. Will anyone find out where that boy is?”
“Believe me, this is a lesson I have to employ myself.” Mr. Ohrmann shuffles more papers, a stack that never seems to get tidier despite his attempts to organize. “You just have to tell yourself: Yours is a file I can close.”
THE HOUSING OFFICE IS EMPTY WHEN I STOP BY TO ASK ABOUT my note. There’s time for me to go back to the cottage before dinner, but I find I don’t want to do that. I’m having trouble concentrating after my conversation with Mr. Ohrmann; I feel unsettled.
Ahead of me, two girls carrying books emerge from the library room; it must be open now. That seems like a soothing place to be for a troubled mind—a quiet room, nothing but the sound of turning pages.
Even now, with everything unpacked, it’s apparent that “library” was an optimistic designation. Along two of the walls, just a few warped shelves contain hard-backed volumes emitting the vague scent of must and mildew. Someone has gone so far as to arrange them by language, but otherwise they’re a jumble: A bird-watching guide is tucked between a historical biography and an encyclopedia for the letter N. Mismatched chairs are pulled up to a solitary table; I’m the only one here.
I pull over one of the chairs to sit on while I look through the Polish section, which is full of mostly boring titles that make me suspect these books had sat unread in people’s attics for a long time before ending up in this camp.
I ought to try to find something, though. I used to like reading, sometimes—my mother would pass on her fantasy novels. Now, I can’t remember the last time I read a full book cover to cover. In the hospital, words swam in front of my eyes. The other girls and I would lie on our backs sometimes and listen to poems the nurses would read during rest times.
Maybe I could handle something basic now, though. I page through the only two books that look promising: a romance that turns out to be courtly and dry, and what looks like the second volume of an adventure series. Without the first volume, though, the plot is confusing, and I can’t keep track of the characters. Maybe I’m not ready to read anything yet after all.
As I pull the chair back to where it belongs, I spot another Polish book, already sitting on the table: The Good Ferryman and Other Classic Stories. This one is a children’s book, the pages are half illustrations and all dog-eared. A donation from a family, maybe, whose children had grown, who didn’t need fairy tales anymore. I open it to the