Ghita Schwarz - Displaced Persons

But this, this debt out of a crime, this payment to a criminal, worse, this idea that there was another version of the tale to which Kuba and Hinda had listened-that Kuba’s childhood friend was anyone but the most treacherous-not just trying to kill, not just stealing from Pavel, but blackmailing Kuba-this did not make Kuba big. It made Pavel small.

He sat in the back office alone, watching the red light of the telephone. Kuba was using the line in the front room, for twenty minutes, a half hour, more. He thought about calling Fela. But she would ask him what the matter was. The quiet background noises of the shop became loud, Grinberg’s steamer pressing the suit trousers, the clacketing of the meter-high sewing machine pedaled by Ramos. He unlocked his front desk drawer and opened the small envelope that held the restored photographs of his mother and father, but looked only for a moment before replacing them and locking the drawer again.

At last the red light turned off. Pavel stared at the phone handle, its dark brown plastic, then at the face of the telephone, the wide finger holes in the clear cover for ease of dialing. When it rang, he jumped.

Pavel. It was Hinda, her words thick, as if her mouth had swollen from the crying. I did not want to tell you.

So! Now I know anyway.

He threatened us, Pavel, he-we were afraid.

How can your husband associate with such animals? How? How is it possible?

He was-Marek was a different person in his youth, Kuba was so happy to find him, he did not know, he did not know what happened to him.

But what he did-he tried to-he wanted to-a murderer!-and then he took the coat off my back as I lay dying, because he knew inside the coat I had-

I know, Pavel, I know, you have told us so many times-

So many times is not too much! You believed him when he told you that I-

We did not believe him, Pavel. She was still crying, he knew, but he could hear that she had lit a cigarette. We just-we were afraid.

PAVEL COULD NOT SPEAK all through dinner. It was as if his face was covered in dirt, smudged and sweaty, even in the winter cold. He could feel his children looking at him in curiosity, a little fearful of his quiet as Fela served them their potatoes and chicken.

Pavel, you want more pepper?

Hmm? he said. Yes, mammele , yes. He twisted the mill twice over his food.

I talked to Mrs. Benfaremo about the hot water. She says on her side it comes on sooner.

Hmm? said Pavel.

The hot water. You said you wanted me to-

Yes, yes, we should talk to Weisenfeld.

She said the people below us have always had the same thing. It’s the boiler for our whole line.

Larry interrupted. “May I please be excused?”

Fela looked at his plate. “You didn’t finished.”

“I almost finished. Look.”

Pavel leaned over his son’s plate, scooped off the potato skin and chicken bone and put it onto his plate. Helen passed her plate too.

“Helen! You haven’t eaten nothing!”

“Ma, I’m full. Please. Can I go too?”

“Ask right.”

“May I please be excused?”

The children grabbed their plates and forks, and from behind him Pavel heard a clanging in the sink.

Not everything from Hinda do I like, said Fela. But I like the phrases she teaches them. I forgot to tell you. Last week the mother of Henry, Larry’s friend, told us what a good boy we had. Polite.

Yes, said Pavel.

Fela was silent a moment. So, what happened today?

Nothing, nothing.

Something happened.

What should have happened?

I just ask you, that’s all.

Business, said Pavel. It’s not so good.

HE AWOKE IN THE night, cold but not remembering his dream. Fela stirred only a bit as he sat up. He stepped out of bed, holding the night table for balance as he pushed his feet into his slippers, then limped through the hallway to the kitchen, his hand touching the walls as he went.

His lighter was in his jacket pocket in the bedroom, but he still had a few cigarettes in the pack he kept in the bill drawer. Sometimes they smelled more delicious than food. He drew one out, placed it unlit in his mouth. Just the taste of the paper made him feel better. He took a large wooden match, what Fela used for the candles on Fridays, and struck it against the wide red strip on the box. The flame gave a light to the kitchen, dark in the hours before sunrise.

Hinda would be sleeping now, resting from the agitation of the afternoon. She rested in daylight also, lying in bed for hours at a time, sometimes crying, perhaps sometimes just thinking, too tired to cry. Once in a while Fela went there to help and to cook, and when they were a little younger Pavel would take the boys out to the park with his own children. Lately Hinda’s resting had become more frequent. She went to a psychiatrist. No doubt today’s telephone call had not helped.

What a family they were, Pavel awake at night, Hinda in bed during the day. Everything in reverse. What a thing to pass down to the children. It was true what they said, some people could not recover. Even here, in the golden city spoken of in his youth, where everything was to be made new, where even before the catastrophe people had come in to build and to earn. Even here. But Pavel was strong. He did not let it come over him the way Hinda let it. He did not let the questions sicken him the way they sickened Hinda. Why did he survive? Why he and not another? He did not let the questions sicken him. He was strong. And his children were strong and good. His nephews also were good, if a little wild, the elder already smoking cigarettes, the younger disappearing with the car before he had a license, scaring Hinda and Kuba into calling the police. But Pavel’s children were not wild. They studied. They earned praise. Hinda doted on Helen like she was her own daughter, presenting her with tiny dolls dressed in the costumes of nationalities all around the world, the names of which Helen rolled around her tongue like an expert importer. Cambodia, Dahomey, Brazil.

His children were good. They would not be affected, he thought, because he and Fela tried, they kept things private, they did not let the children hear of anything they worried about. Hinda too tried. She did not speak of any past, even to Pavel. Perhaps she spoke with Kuba, but Pavel thought not. Kuba cared for her like she was a wounded soldier. He was a good husband-he let her stay quiet. When Pavel decided to go to the first commemoration of the Belsener displaced persons, Pavel asked them to go, and without even looking at each other both gave him the same look of doubt, even disdain. It upset Hinda to think about anything at all, and in Kuba she had an ally.

But sometimes she could not escape. Some things were too public, blared in the news, not just in the Yiddish weeklies she refused to read but also in the American papers and magazines, the capture of a war criminal in Argentina, the beginning of a trial in Israel. She had gone to bed this last time just after the High Holidays, when the trial was already under way some months. Pavel had almost not noticed her disappearance. Instead he had been calling Fishl twice a day, once after reading the morning papers and once after reading the evening papers. The numbers, the statistical testimony, consumed him but also gave him some relief. It was true, it was true, it was true. And if the American papers printed terrible photographs, images he had to skip over, at least the text of the articles gave counts and countries, cold figures. Everyone saw it was true.

They already know it is true, said Fela. They knew it was true long ago. Just no one did anything before.

They did, said Pavel. They did. Even in Hamburg, even in Celle there were trials.

Ha, said Fela. Ha! Celle! The man had a chicken farm not a mile from Belsen, even closer to the DP camp than we were! Didn’t you read how the Americans caught him once, then let him go? They believed lies a child would not believe! He was allowed to leave Germany before we were!