Even without the story, Ludwig would have noticed Purim. The Persons in the camp — those who were not disabled, paralyzed with despair, stuck in the TB hospital, too old, too young, or (by some mistake in assignment) Christian — the Persons were loudly occupied with the holiday. In the barrack rooms, behind the tarps and curtain strips that separated cubicle from cubicle, costumers rustled salvaged fabrics; in stairwells, humorists practiced skits; in the west building, raisins fermented and a still bubbled. In the village, Persons were exchanging cigarettes and candy bars for the local wine. “Sour and thin,” sneered Uncle Claud, who hid among his belongings a bottle of cognac procured God knew how. Uncle Claud smoked most of his cigarette allotment and also Ludwig’s, and so he rarely had anything to barter. The cognac — Ludwig thought of it as a foretaste of the waters of Zion. “Zion has no waters,” Uncle Claud insisted. Every night he gave Ludwig a fiery thimbleful, after their last game.
They owned a board. Sometimes they were able to borrow chessmen, but usually they rented those of a Lithuanian in the next room, the fervent Messiah’s room. The Lithuanian didn’t care for chess but happened to own the set of his brother, now ashes. He wouldn’t lend, wouldn’t sell, would only lease. Claud had to relinquish a cigarette for the nightly pleasure.
But now … Ludwig parted the shredded canvas that was their door, sat down on the lower bunk beside his uncle. “Look!” he said, and shook the box Sonya had given him like a noisemaker.
Claud smiled and coughed. “The Litvak — he can kiss my backside.”
WHEN SONYA LEFT THE OFFICE, Ida resumed typing. She was doing requisitions: for sulfa drugs; for books; for thread; for food, food, food.
Dear Colonel Spaulding,
You are correct that the 2000 calories Per Person Per Day are Supplemented by Red Cross packages and purchases from the village. But the Red Cross packages come unpredictably. Some of our Persons will not eat Spam. And though we must turn a blind eye to the Black Market, it seems unwise to encourage its use. Our severest need now is dried fruit — our store of raisins is completely wiped out — and sanitary napkins.
Yours Very Truly,
Sonya Sofrankovich
Ida ran a hand through her hair. It was as dense and dark as it had been ten years earlier, when she was captured, separated from the husband now known to be dead, oh Shmuel, and forced to work in a munitions factory. Not labor camp, not escape from labor camp, not the death in her arms of her best friend, oh Luba, not recapture, not liberation; not going unwashed for weeks, not living on berries in the woods, not the disappearance of her menses for almost a year and their violent return; not influenza lice odors suppurations; not the discovery in the forest of an infant’s remains, a baby buried shallowly, dug up by animals; not the one rape and the many beatings — nothing had conquered the springiness of her hair. Her hair betrayed her expectance of happiness. And where would she find this happiness? Ah, b’eretz, in the Land. Milliners, she had been informed by the emissary from the Underground, barely concealing his disgust … Milliners were not precisely what the Land required. Do you think we wear chapeaux while feeding our chickens, Giverit? Perhaps you intend to drape our cows with silken garlands. Sitting on a wooden chair, hands folded in her lap, she told him that she would change careers with readiness, transform herself into a milkmaid, till the fields, draw water, shoot Arabs, blow up Englishmen. Then she leaned toward this lout of a pioneer. “But if cities arise b’eretz, and commerce, and romance — I’ll make hats again.” He looked at her for a long time. Then he wrote her name on his list. Now she was waiting for the summons.
Meanwhile she typed applications for other Persons. Belgium had recently announced that it would take some. Australia also. Canada too. America was still dithering about its immigration laws, although the Lutheran Council of the American Midwest had volunteered to relocate fifty Persons, not specifying agricultural workers, not even specifying Lutherans. But how many tailors could this place Minnesota absorb?
She typed an application, translating from the Yiddish handwriting. Name: Morris Losowitz; yes, she knew him as Mendel but Morris was the proper Anglicization. Age: 35; yes that was true. Dependents: Wife and three Children; yes that was true, too, though it ignored the infant on the way. Occupation: Electrical Engineer. In Poland he had taught in a cheder. Perhaps he knew how to change a lightbulb. Languages Spoken in Order of Fluency: Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, English. Strictly true. He could say “I want to go to America,” and maybe a dozen other words. His wife spoke better English, was more intelligent; but the application wasn’t curious about her.
Ida typed on and on. The afternoon darkened further. Her own overhead lightbulb shook on its noose. In the big hall above her ceiling raged a joyous battle: walls were being decorated, the camp’s orchestra was practicing, the Purim spielers were perfecting their skits.
She stopped, and covered her typewriter with the remnants of a tallith. She locked the office and went into the courtyard. Two members of the DP police stood there, self-important noodles. They grinned at her. She passed children still playing in the chill dark. She entered the east building. What a din: groups of men, endlessly arguing. And those two Hungarian sisters, always together, their hands clasped or at least their knuckles touching. She’d heard that they accompanied each other into the toilet. In the first room there was a vent to the outdoors and somebody had installed a stove, and always a cabbage stew boiled, or a pot of onions, and always washed diapers hung near the steam, never getting entirely dry. Hers was the next room, hers the first cubicle, where a nice old lady slept in the bed above, preferring elevation to the rats she believed infested the place, though there had been no rats since the visit of a sanitary squad from the British occupation zone. But the lady expected their return, and never left her straw mattress until mid-afternoon.
She was up and about now, gossiping somewhere. From beneath the bed Ida dragged a sack and dumped its contents onto her own mattress — a silk blouse, silk underwear, sewing utensils, glue, and a Wehrmacht helmet, battered and cracked. And cellophane; cellophane wrappers; dozens of cellophane wrappers, hundreds; some crushed, some merely torn, some intact, slipped whole from the Lucky Strikes and Camels that they had once protected … She began to work.
SONYA, EJECTED FROM HER OFFICE by the solicitous Ida, had only pretended to be taking a walk. When out of range of the office window she doubled back to the south building. Two women there were near their time, though neither was ready to be transported to the lying-in bungalow. In their room they were being entertained by three men rehearsing a Purim spieclass="underline" a Mordecai with a fat book, an Ahasuerus in a cloak, and a fool in a cap with a single bell. A fool? The Purim spiel had a long connection to the commedia dell’arte, Roland had mentioned. This fool played a harmonica, the king sang Yedeh hartz hot soides—Every heart has secrets — and Mordecai, his book open, rocked from side to side and uttered wise sayings.