We Were the Lucky Ones

On a warm Saturday afternoon, Bella and Victor sit on a blanket at the edge of a makeshift soccer field a short walk from Bismarckstrasse.

“See your Papa over there?” Bella asks, leaning her head close to Victor’s and pointing. Jakob stands with his hands propped on his waist near the opponent’s goal. He glances in their direction and waves. Jakob had helped create the camp’s soccer league; it was good exercise, and it offered the perfect distraction from the emigration-paperwork waiting game. He and his teammates practice daily and compete twice a week, mostly against teams of other Jewish DPs but occasionally against one of Stuttgart’s local squads. The matches against the Germans are held on a much nicer field than those of the Jewish league, but Jakob is used to that from his days playing against the Polish leagues in Radom. He’s also aware of how quickly a match can turn sour, and he can pick out the Germans who are in it for the fun of it and those who still harbor an obvious sense of resentment toward the Jews, from the moment they step onto the pitch. When he faces off against the latter, it’s usually a matter of minutes before the insults are hurled—dirty Jews, conniving thieves, pigs, you deserved what you got. The men on Jakob’s team have grown used to the hostility, and though often fully capable of beating their opponents, they inevitably decide at the half-time huddle that it’s in their best interest to go ahead and let the bastards win, for there is no denying what a group of enraged Germans is capable of, on or off the field.

A whistle blows. The match is over. One of Jakob’s knees is skinned and his shirt is streaked brown with dirt, but he is beaming. He shakes hands with the opposing team (a friendly one—Bella attends only the matches played among the Jewish teams), and trots over to the sideline.

“Hello, sunshine!” he says, planting a sweaty kiss on Bella’s lips, and then reaching for Victor. “Did you see my goal, big boy? Shall we have a victory lap?” He trots off with Victor in his arms.

“Be careful, darling!” Bella cries after him. “He can barely hold his head up!”

“He’s fine!” Jakob calls over his shoulder, laughing. “He loves it!”

Bella sighs, watching Victor’s near-bald head bobble as Jakob jogs a circle before returning to the blanket. Victor is grinning so widely that Bella can see all four of his teeth.

“When do you think he’ll be old enough to kick a ball?” Jakob asks, once his victory lap is complete. He sets Victor gently back down beside Bella on the blanket.

“Soon enough, love,” she replies, laughing. “Soon enough.”





CHAPTER SIXTY


    Addy


   Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ~ February 1946




Addy walks the black-and-white mosaic promenade of Copacabana’s Avenida Atlantica, chatting with one of the few Poles he’s kept up with from the Alsina—Sebastian, a writer, originally from Kraków. Sebastian, like Addy, had managed to hitch a ride across the Strait of Gibraltar and onto the Cabo do Hornos—“by selling my grandfather’s gold cufflinks off my wrist,” he said. He and Addy don’t see each other often in Rio, but when they do, they enjoy the chance to slip back into their native tongue. Speaking the language they grew up with is comforting, in a way—a nod to a chapter of their lives, a time and a place that exists now only in their memories. Inevitably, their get-togethers lead to discussions of the trivial things they miss the most about Poland: for Sebastian, the smell of poppies in the springtime, the sweet, rose-petal-jam-filled goodness of a p?czki z ró?? pastry, the thrill of traveling to Warsaw to take in a new opera at the Teatr Wielki; and for Addy, the pleasure of walking to the movie house on a summer night to catch the latest Charlie Chaplin film, pausing along the way to listen to the melodic rifts of Roman Totenberg’s Stradivarius floating from the open windows above, the irresistible taste of his mother’s star-shaped biscuits dipped in a hot mug of thick, sweet cocoa after a day spent ice skating the pond at Stary Ogród park.

Of course, more than missing p?czki and pond skating, Addy and Sebastian miss their families. For a while, they spoke at length about their parents and siblings, comparing endless scenarios of who may have ended up where; but as the months and then the years passed with no news from the relatives they’d left behind, wondering aloud about their fate became too difficult, and they kept family talk to a minimum.

“Heard anything from Kraków?” Addy asks.

Sebastian shakes his head no. “You, from Radom?”

“No,” Addy says, clearing his throat, trying not to sound deflated. Since V-E day, as American president Harry Truman called it, Addy has doubled his efforts in communicating with the Red Cross, hoping, dreaming, praying that with the war finally over, his family would surface. But so far, the only news he’s learned is of the staggering number of concentration camps discovered throughout Europe, in Poland especially. Every day, it seems, Allied forces stumble across another camp, another handful of near-death survivors. The newspapers have begun publishing photos. The images are horrifying. In them, survivors appear more dead than alive. Their complexions are practically translucent, their cheeks and eyes and spaces over their collarbones hollow. Most wear prison-striped pajamas that hang pitifully from too-sharp shoulder blades. They are barefoot, their heads bald. Those without shirts are so emaciated their ribs and hip bones jut out a fist-width from their waistlines. When Addy comes across a photo, he can’t help but stare, boiling with anger and despair, terrified of finding a familiar face.

The possibility of his family perishing in one of Hitler’s camps is all too real. His brothers in stripes. His beautiful sisters laid low, shorn of their hair. His mother and father, holding each other as they take their last breaths, their lungs choked with toxic fumes. When the images creep into his mind, he refuses them, thinking instead of his parents and siblings just the way he’d left them—of Genek reaching for a cigarette from his silver case, of Jakob smiling with his arm looped snug around Bella’s shoulder, of Mila at the keys of the baby grand, of Halina throwing her blonde head back in a fit of laughter, of his mother with a pen in her hand at her writing table, of his father at the window, watching the doves as he hums a piece from Ró?ycki’s Casanova, the opera he and Addy saw together in Warsaw for Addy’s twentieth birthday. He refuses to remember them any other way.

Sebastian changes the subject and the men walk on, squinting into the reflection of the afternoon sun boring into Copacabana’s frothy surf.

“Shall we sit for a snack?” Addy asks as they approach Leme Rock at the north end of the beach.

“Absolutely. All this talk of p?czki has made me hungry.”

At the rock, they turn left on Rua Anchieta, and Addy points out Caroline’s apartment overlooking Leme Beach.

“How is Caroline?” Sebastian asks.

“She’s well. Although talking more and more about returning to the States.”

“She’d bring you along, I presume?” Sebastian asks, smiling.

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