An Afterlife. Frances Bartkowski

before the war, but still it was so much more than he hoped for during the dark time. This woman agreed to marry him. She loved him. She kept telling him so. In every language they shared—Yiddish, Polish, German. She even taught him to say the words in English. To practice, in case they went to America.

      He was beginning to believe in their future together. It was hard for them all. And it was all they wanted. To be able to believe. Ilya would give up all the grief over the past if only he could really put faith in the future. Ruby was able to pray. But he couldn’t do it. He never had. He didn’t believe. Whenever the subject came up–and it did a lot—on Friday evenings whether you went to camp services or not—you couldn’t escape being a Jew. A believer in God, that was the part Ilya just couldn’t play. For Ilya religion was just bubbe meises, old wives’ tales. Words and stories that helped some people to sleep at night. Not him. When he and Ruby went to see the DP camp rabbi about getting married, he was honest about his skepticism. He had no argument with being a Jew, and he knew that when he and Ruby were blessed with children they would be Jews. She would probably insist on a religious education. Maybe his children would be more Jewish, and that was fine with him. What wasn’t fine and made him lose patience were the conversations about where God was when they were all in hell.

      He saw nothing there to argue about. God was gone. For Ilya, maybe he was never there, but he didn’t say that to anyone. Sadie said their parents would be turning over in their graves to hear him say such things. He didn’t bother with the obvious just to hurt her more—their parents had no graves. A few times he said such things, and you’d think it made him the enemy. Nobody wanted to admit that you could maybe not believe, but still hope. That hope could be what you believed, and beyond that who knew what you would find? Ilya always hoped. The ones who lost hope? They looked like Motek in his hospital bed, fading away. Knowing their time was over, giving up. That he didn’t do.

      The rabbi had commended him on his hope. He said he could see Ilya was a good man who would make a good husband and father. It was as close to a father’s blessing as he would get. The approval of friends meant much to him and to Ruby, too. He heard Ruby calling to him and, looking up, he saw her waving from the window of Motek’s second story hospital room. Hearing his name called aloud, such a simple thing, sent him into a near panic. No one in this city knew him. He took a deep breath and waved back at her. He smiled up into the pale April sun. Her sweet face was partly in shadow. Her voice, his name in her mouth—it took his breath away. She persuaded him this was love, not to be afraid. How did she know? How could she be sure? She seemed able to pick up her life and know what to do with it. Where did she learn that?

      “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he spoke up to her, mouthing the words deliberately. He wasn’t sure she would hear him.

      Ilya turned his attention back to the anonymous people on the busy Munich street. He had this way with some strangers. He could see them like x-rays. That girl, maybe ten years old, walking by holding the hand of a boy. Her younger brother, probably. Ilya felt as if he could see her a young mother ten or twenty years from now, leading her son by the hand. And as easily, he saw her supported by the arm of grandson half a century from today. Ilya didn’t know whether it was a blessing or a curse, this seeing the younger and older ones who lived inside us all. He thought it came from watching those men his age disappear day by day before his eyes. Yes, this minute, they were all of them, the ones living on, full of life, healthy and full of hopes and wishes.

      For two years at least, longer for many, they lived on the air. Oh yes, water, soup, bread, yes. But how they kept breathing—that was the key. Sighing was a way to breathe deeply. They all did lots of that. Of course, some tried to keep talking. But words ran out. Their energy was limited. To get to the next day you needed just to breathe. No matter how bad the smell of death all around, and mud and shit. No matter how cold the morning air. No matter how your lungs ached from the work of breathing.

      Ilya put out his third cigarette and then he headed back inside the hospital. The sight of the nurses and doctors moving with purpose mirrored the people in the street. Everyone had a job to do. He and Ruby were visitors. He heard her laughing as he reached the door of Motek’s room—that was her job here—to laugh and to talk. For Motek it was the sound of life going on.

      Motek was smiling—Ilya could see that it took some effort. But his eyes burned bright at the pleasure of Ruby’s visit. She was a girl from home. It was good to remember how they had been young together before the war. Ruby had told Ilya about Motek’s parents, who owned the most beautiful coffee house in their neighborhood of Kazimierz. Her family often came for hot chocolate and pastries on Sunday afternoons in winter. Sundays were for long walks to the edge of town and back. Coming back from these walks, she and her sister would beg to warm up at the café. They all knew each other from school, and their familiarity delighted Ruby and Pearl’s parents, who could see their daughters through the eyes of others when they went out in public. Today Motek had been reminiscing about his father and uncle who ran the shop. His words were labored, but he was visibly proud of how they had kept the wooden benches, chairs, and floors polished so they would reflect more light in the mirrors all around. When you entered it was a dream of opulence. Always a special occasion, even though Ruby’s family was well off enough to go regularly. Those days of pleasure and fancy were so far behind, but for Ruby and Motek to see each other brought back the feeling of ease—before life turned dark.

      She could see he wasn’t going to make it.

      “I promise to come visit again in a couple of weeks. Ilya and I will make it our business to come back.”

      That feeling of home was as compelling to her as it was life-giving to Motek. The telegram that came ten days later would put out another light in her soul. More memories gone. Less and less remained of who she once was. More and more of her life was with Ilya and the friends in camp. The world had become so much more awful and smaller than she had dreamed when she was a girl. So many promises that were long ago broken. So many expectations: simple things like the fantasy of having her mother teach a grandchild to play the piano, as she had her own daughters. A joy she could never lose—that music she learned. Like reading a book, it came naturally. She’d have to teach her own child what she could remember—maybe that Chopin nocturne she used to work at from time to time when she felt really serious and really sad.

      • • •

      Today Fanya took the train into Munich with Ruby for Motek’s funeral. This hometown boy she had just met again. Two weeks ago, when she and Ilya went to visit him in the hospital, she knew there would be the gift of seeing him alive, and then the comfort and pleasure in food and drink afterwards. Today there would just be heartache. She and Fanya held hands and looked out the window lost in their own thoughts. When Ruby couldn’t bear the silence any longer, she squeezed Fanya’s hand gently to get her attention.

      “I have to tell you a story I remember about him when he was young. Remember, I told you about his family’s coffee house and tea room, and how we would go there on weekends with my parents for hot chocolate in winter or ice cream in summer. One Sunday, he was working there with his parents and he was our waiter. It was comical to me and my sister because we knew him from school, where he was a very serious student. He treated us all, but especially me and my sister, as if we were his best and only customers. He made us special drinks with extra whipped cream and put chocolate candies on the plates. It was all very flattering. I remember our parents were amused to see what a show he put on for us girls. We must have been fifteen years old. I think he liked my sister quite a lot. And I remember her blushing at all the attention. But I had to keep from laughing because the whole time he fussed over us, making several trips to our table, he had powdered sugar in his hair. He must have had some on his hands in the kitchen and run his fingers through his hair. Maybe he sneezed. Or maybe someone in the kitchen played a joke on him. But he didn’t know it was there. It made him clownish, but it also looked like part of his hair had turned white. A boy pretending to be a man.”

      Ruby paused and her voice broke.

      “And here we are on the way to his funeral. He’s the age my brother would be, thirty-five.”

      Ruby’s voice became small, and Fanya let go of her hand and put an arm around her shoulder.

      “It’s