An Afterlife. Frances Bartkowski

you won’t have to be cleaning up after her. You and Ilya, you’ll have a chance to be left alone. You’ll see, he loves you more than anything, Ruby. With Sadie gone, he’ll calm down. She just gets him all mixed up.”

      “I know, Fanya. You and I, we’re like sisters, but you don’t act like my mother. That’s what Sadie does. She makes Ilya feel such a miserable mess. Ilya says she’s been like that since the day they found each other alive.”

      What Ruby couldn’t know was the story she had never quite pieced together. Ilya admitted that Sadie was stronger than he was when she found him. And both of them said it was she who found him. On that much they agreed. That and the fact that he looked like a bag of bones. It was pouring rain, and he was wearing a raincoat and boots. Sadie never failed to mention that they were too big for him, the boots. That he looked like a fisherman with no boat. For Sadie this was the shock of it all. Her big brother—not gone like the rest. But here was his shadow. That was what infuriated her so.

      She wanted for them to be together, but how could she get around, with him in such bad shape? Then would always follow the part about Ilya’s stay in the hospital and their different versions again made for fireworks—the sound of fireworks, not the sight of beautiful stars exploding in the sky. How could she want him to stay with her, and insist they go to Palestine together, when all she did was get angry with him?

      All Ruby knew was that every time Ilya saw Sadie he came home in need of a nurse, like a wounded child, or a beaten dog. Ruby was tired of it and she would be glad to see Sadie and Aaron off. In a few weeks they were scheduled to leave from Bremen with maybe 30 others from the camp. Papers were nearly in order and goodbye dinners, coffees, and teas were the usual for that group.

      Because of Ruby’s job in the camp office she knew people’s comings and goings. And she had to hear their stories whether or not she wanted to. No matter the kind of story, she listened. That wasn’t her job but it was how she spent most of her time at work. Paperwork, mail, and telephone calls from the Americans in charge, but mostly listening. She couldn’t stop herself, or them. The ones who told a good story with jokes or the angry stories of injustices suffered, those filled her up. Listening to them felt like learning. Some were so upset they could barely speak, or else they couldn’t stop but made little sense–with them she tried to imagine she was deaf. But really she was memorizing them. At night Ilya listened to her. And she could make him laugh or sometimes cry with her productions of what she had seen and heard. At least once a week she reported on Mr. Grynwald. He was the one who would try to sweet talk Ruby, thinking she had some kind of power here in this office. It was a run down little room, with one window, a tiny desk, an uncomfortable chair. But to him, the very existence of a telephone on the desk made him think magic could happen. He wanted Ruby to help move him and his wife along to the top of some list so they could leave Germany sooner. He always had some story of bitterness about this German or that one, and when Ruby would close her ears to his moaning he would shift and turn his attention to pleasing her instead. What could he bring her from the workroom where he was learning how to sew men’s clothing on one of the new machines recently delivered by the GI’s? To this Ruby listened with excitement, and he knew sewing was one of her favorite things to do when she was at home. Could he bring her a special color thread? Some scraps of rayon–a new fabric they were getting to work on. Mr. Grynwald would try anything to lift Ruby’s spirits so she might help him.

      • • •

      Where Ruby learned the twists and turns of the rules and where you could go around the rules, to Ilya rules were rules–it made him a good DP camp policeman. He and about thirty others kept watch over the two gates to the Kaserne, guarded day and night. Ilya spent part of his days standing around, watching people come and go, or riding his bicycle and keeping his eyes and ears open.

      Watch for what, he asked himself? These were mostly young people, glad to be alive. The most antisocial thing anybody might get up to was buying things on the black market–or bribing someone to get papers more quickly. The early days of marches and violent demonstrations against the British about opening up the quotas for Palestine were behind them, and so was the first Purim where the Jews carried effigies of Hitler as Haman through the streets of this town where he had once been a privileged prisoner. Ilya was outraged when he learned that just a short walk from the Kaserne was the prison where twenty years ago Hitler had ranted about how he would change the world, before the whole world knew his name, and he brought the world to ruin.

      • • •

      Ilya kept trying to remember to say Israel, not Palestine when he spoke to Sadie and Aaron. Ruby wanted to go there, too. Letters from her Aunt Masha, when they came, were a big deal. This aunt was some kind of character, leaving Poland for a kibbutz in 1934. Ruby thought she might find other relatives there, too. All the lists provided by the American and British armies didn’t persuade Ruby that everyone had been accounted for after this terrible time, this World War II, they were calling it.

      Ilya found Sadie already sitting, waiting for him in the café corner of the dining hall. Already he could see her impatience, and he had done his best to get there at the time when the women working in the kitchen made coffee and tea. Maybe today there would be some fresh crackers, or even some stale cakes. The sounds of the kitchen echoed through the vast hall, a military building like all the places in the DP camp, but this one must have once held large equipment or vehicles. It had that smell of metal and oil when you first came inside. Now it was a social place where dozens and dozens would eat, pray, and celebrate anything they could imagine. Yes, cakes would help to sweeten what he knew was coming. He knew she wanted to talk about the big move she and Aaron would be making. He also knew she thought he should follow her there. He felt as if they were just learning to stand on their own two feet again. They were youngsters when they were separated—now here she was, married, and already a mother. They were already in a new country. How could Sadie pick up and go so far away again? He tried to be the big brother.

      “You know I wish you and Aaron well. But Ruby and I, we can’t leave yet. We don’t have the papers from the doctors. You’ll write and tell us what you both, and your little Naftali, think about the place. Maybe you can meet Ruby’s Aunt Masha. Who knows? We’re young, and we all have to live, just keep living. But Sadie,” he sighed, and it was a while before he caught his breath, “but Sadie, my heart is breaking. We just found each other and now we’re going our separate ways so soon?”

      Tearful, just letting them roll down her cheeks, Sadie wiped an eye.

      “Ilya, you know I want for us all to stay together, in one place. But Aaron found a friend from home who wants to open a market and wants Aaron to come work for him, and maybe me, too. Together they want to see if we can start a business. And Israel needs markets. In America, where you and Ruby are going, there are hundreds of stores selling shoes, coats, food. In Israel, Aaron and I can make a living, for sure. He’s a baker, and I worked in the kitchen in the Lager. If we work hard, we’ll manage. And there are people who speak Polish and Yiddish. Having to speak German every day, it’s like spitting for me!”

      “Sadie, you’ll be all right. Mama and Papa would be glad to see us both alive and well, and you married and a mother already. You and Aaron, we’ll miss you. And you know we want to see our children grow up and be cousins to each other. Maybe in Israel? Maybe in America? We’ll see Sadie. Our parents were never as happy together as you and Aaron are, and as me and my Ruby are. Our father was always running off to the city, or out of the country, on business, he said. Remember how excited we were when he would come home? He would bring us something special, usually sweets we didn’t get in Sosnowiecz, or even in Poland. You and I will stay in close touch. Letters, pictures. Maybe we can sometimes talk on the telephone. Ruby says people in America all have private telephones. She’s always full of stories about America from her GI’s she meets at work. I wish you and Ruby got along better. She has my heart.”

      Later that Sunday, Ruby saw how downcast he looked, and she asked, tentatively, “What’s doing with Sadie and Aaron?”

      “How could she do this to me? How can she leave me? Leave all the friends here in Germany, and go to Israel? How can they just pick up and go?”

      He wasn’t really speaking