because how could I ask a cop for directions if I got lost? The uniform, huh? So I stayed home. A car backfiring in the street made me cry. I was crying a lot then.” She peered up at me, proving that her eyes were dry.
“Who brought you to New York?”
“My children. A boy and a girl, the boy older. When we saw how it was at the beginning, my husband and me, may God rest his soul, we packed them up and got them out. We sent them to my sister in New York. But we still didn’t believe all of it, so we stayed. There was the business.” She smoothed back her graying hair. Her knuckles were swollen, knobby, and arthritic; they looked like the joints at the end of a drumstick. She could have removed her rings only with wire clippers. “The business,” she said. “My husband was in fur. We sold to the top monsters. We protected their wives and their fancy women against the cold. ‘People will always need fur,’ he said to me. We wrapped ourselves in fur against the Holocaust. Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
I’d never been less hungry in my life. I shook my head.
“We should have known better,” she said. “Fur burns.” She closed her eyes. “Scheiss,” she added. She wasn’t Polish. She was German.
“And your husband?”
“He burned, too,” she said dispassionately. She opened her eyes and looked at nothing. For her it was an old story.
“Where are your children now?”
“East. New York. I told you already. The big hepple.” She waved the arm with the tattoo to indicate the walls, lined with photographs of heavy men with beards wearing dark suits. Assembled around them were impossibly large families, huge broods of smiling adults and children, now lost, scattered, annihilated, incinerated. “We had to sneak the pictures in their bags after the children slept,” she said. “Old pictures don’t mean anything except to old people.”
“So you sent them out with the children.”
“If I hadn’t,” she said, “I wouldn’t have any past. Any happy past, I mean. Nothing left but the fires and the curses. What’s my life, huh? These pictures.”
“And the soup,” I said.
She gave the idea of the soup a one-handed gesture that could have sent it all the way to Latvia. “I do it for the smell,” she said again. “It makes the pictures move.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s the only reason you make the soup.”
She tossed a bright, dry, sparrowlike glance at me. “So it’s more than that,” she said. “That’s a federal case? They’re hungry, right? Like I said, I been hungry.”
“How did your children let you escape from them?” I asked.
“Oh, well,” she said, placing her hands in her lap. Her fingers folded over each other like the leaves of a prized manuscript, yellow and faded and hard to read. I thought of Hermione’s palm. “I embarrassed them. I couldn’t go nowhere. Anywhere, I mean. I couldn’t sleep. I was cold all the time. I lost weight in Treblinka, you know? Thirty pounds, no less. I never got it back.”
She held up a parchment arm. “Look at me, skin and bones. The New York winters drove spikes through my skin. I felt—what’s the word?—impaled, like I was nailed to my bed by icicles. So I woke up in the mornings, on the nights I went to sleep I mean, and I made problems. When I slept, my dreams were all people dead or dying, so I stopped dreaming. Skinny, no English, crying in the middle of parties, scared by loud noises. My grandchildren laughed at me. I embarrassed everybody. It wasn’t their fault.” She blinked, heavy as a tortoise. “It’s a terrible thing to stop dreaming.”
“So you came to California,” I said for lack of anything else.
“I was brought here,” she said. “My children talked about it and brought me out here. I had friends here then. They’re all gone now. I got here, it was clean, there were orange trees, you could smell the ocean. Not like now. And it was warm.”
“They write you?”
“Oh, sure.
“Who brought you to New York?”
“My children. A boy and a girl, the boy older. When we saw how it was at the beginning, my husband and me, may God rest his soul, we packed them up and got them out. We sent them to my sister in New York. But we still didn’t believe all of it, so we stayed. There was the business.” She smoothed back her graying hair. Her knuckles were swollen, knobby, and arthritic; they looked like the joints at the end of a drumstick. She could have removed her rings only with wire clippers. “The business,” she said. “My husband was in fur. We sold to the top monsters. We protected their wives and their fancy women against the cold. ‘People will always need fur,’ he said to me. We wrapped ourselves in fur against the Holocaust. Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
I’d never been less hungry in my life. I shook my head.
“We should have known better,” she said. “Fur burns.” She closed her eyes. “Scheiss,” she added. She wasn’t Polish. She was German.
“And your husband?”
“He burned, too,” she said dispassionately. She opened her eyes and looked at nothing. For her it was an old story.
“Where are your children now?”
“East. New York. I told you already. The big hepple.” She waved the arm with the tattoo to indicate the walls, lined with photographs of heavy men with beards wearing dark suits. Assembled around them were impossibly large families, huge broods of smiling adults and children, now lost, scattered, annihilated, incinerated. “We had to sneak the pictures in their bags after the children slept,” she said. “Old pictures don’t mean anything except to old people.”
“So you sent them out with the children.”
“If I hadn’t,” she said, “I wouldn’t have any past. Any happy past, I mean. Nothing left but the fires and the curses. What’s my life, huh? These pictures.”
“And the soup,” I said.
She gave the idea of the soup a one-handed gesture that could have sent it all the way to Latvia. “I do it for the smell,” she said again. “It makes the pictures move.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s the only reason you make the soup.”
She tossed a bright, dry, sparrowlike glance at me. “So it’s more than that,” she said. “That’s a federal case? They’re hungry, right? Like I said, I been hungry.”
“How did your children let you escape from them?” I asked.
“Oh, well,” she said, placing her hands in her lap. Her fingers folded over each other like the leaves of a prized manuscript, yellow and faded and hard to read. I thought of Hermione’s palm. “I embarrassed them. I couldn’t go nowhere. Anywhere, I mean. I couldn’t sleep. I was cold all the time. I lost weight in Treblinka, you know? Thirty pounds, no less. I never got it back.”
She held up a parchment arm. “Look at me, skin and bones. The New York winters drove spikes through my skin. I felt—what’s the word?—impaled, like I was nailed to my bed by icicles. So I woke up in the mornings, on the nights I went to sleep I mean, and I made problems. When I slept, my dreams were all people dead or dying, so I stopped dreaming. Skinny, no English, crying in the middle of parties, scared by loud noises. My grandchildren laughed at me. I embarrassed everybody. It wasn’t their fault.” She blinked, heavy as a tortoise. “It’s a terrible thing to stop dreaming.”
“So you came to California,” I said for lack of anything else.
“I was brought here,” she said. “My children talked about it and brought me out here. I had friends here then. They’re all gone now. I got here, it was clean, there were orange trees, you could smell the ocean. Not like now. And it was warm.”
“They write you?”
“Oh, sure.
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