Psalm 44

“I don’t make a fire very often,” she said. “I don’t have the wood, and I’m afraid that they’ll come bother me if they see the smoke. There are so many of these refugees, and Jews too. Everything has gone to the dogs.” Then, abruptly: “Are you hungry?”

“No,” she said. “I have just one favor to ask of you.”

“I don’t have any money,” the woman said. “If you stay here to work for me, we’ll open a tavern. . if everything doesn’t go to hell.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. It’s a little paper and a pen. Whatever. So I can get in touch with my husband.”

“Don’t play the saint,” the woman said. She cast a glance at the baby. “That child is not even half a year old,” she said.

“Three months.”

“See, what did I say? Not half a year old.”

“But really,” Marija said. “He’s an officer.”

The woman brought over a greasy old school notebook full of calculations in smeared ballpoint ink. She flipped around in it a bit until she found a blank page.

“Here,” she said. “Just don’t play the saint.”

Marija took the pen and pulled the paper closer to the flame of the oil lamp. Then:

“I’m sorry. I can’t do it tonight. I’m tired.”

Two or three days later, after the woman had come to trust Marija enough to leave her at home alone (to tell the truth, she did lock the door from the outside) whenever she left for the nearby villages to run some household errands, Marija wrote Jakob this letter:

The little one is three months old. By day he sleeps in an old armchair next to the stove.

When I have work to do in the yard, Mrs. Schmidt watches him. She still thinks that Jan is a bastard. As soon as you get this letter, let us hear from you so that we know whether you are alive.

I got this address from Mrs. Schmidt. She has promised to get me the addresses of all the displaced person camps.

That was the first letter. After waiting for three months, she wondered if Jakob hadn’t received the letter because she had posted it without any stamps. She asked Mrs. Schmidt to lend her the money for stamps.

“All right, all right,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “Give me a letter. I’ll put stamps on it. . Just don’t you play the saint.”

“He’ll pay you back, ma’am,” Marija said. “He’s a doctor. We lost track of each other ten months ago.”

That was after three months. In the second letter was this:

The little one is six months old. He loves to eat dry bread. Mrs. Smith prepares food and I wait on the customers. Sometimes I get chocolate for Jan from soldiers. Mrs. Smith is a little disillusioned. Things haven’t gone according to plan for her.

Jakob, I am waiting for you. You taught me how to hope.

In the third letter she transmitted the brief message that their little boy was eight months old and that she thought he looked a lot like him, like Jakob. He is talking but he isn’t walking yet. He’s quite the little phenomenon. This letter was sent to a special section of the Red Cross and to units of the Allied armed forces.

After fourteen days of feverish anticipation, she received a la-conic reply:

Wait for me. I am coming. I love you both.

Jakob

She kissed Mrs. Schmidt on the cheek.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “But you’re still playing the saint.”

“We haven’t seen each other for nearly a year and a half. Just imagine: eighteen months!”

“That’s nothing,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “Mine hasn’t been heard from for four whole years. And he wasn’t a bad one, believe me. Saturday evenings we would take little excursions. By morning we’d be on top of a hayrick. Then he’d open up his backpack. ‘Today, my wife, you will be my guest!’ he’d say. Then he would cut two slices of bread and make sandwiches. And pour beer from a thermos into our glasses. Into mine first, then into his. . Not that I’m not playing the saint here.”

Chapter 5

Jakob lay for the third month in an American hospital several kilometers outside Berlin. Along with general exhaustion and stomach problems, he still had an open fistula on the outside of his left knee. He had sustained that injury while escaping from the camp in Oranienburg. That was in November. Two days before the total evacuation of the camp. He still couldn’t eat and he often surreptitiously swapped chocolate for cigarettes. He was smoking a great deal and taking sleeping pills. During the day he stared at the ceiling and quarreled with the patients who shouted back and forth to each other and played préférence.

“You’re a doctor?” the director asked him one day, in English. That was in February. At four in the afternoon, as Dr. Leo was making the rounds of his patients, Jakob hadn’t even noticed the entrance of the examiners from the medical board. He lay there sprawled across his iron bed as on a catafalque. He stared at the high white ceiling. One of his hands hung down next to the bed like a dead appendage. From time to time he would bring a cigarette up to his lips, nothing more. Then he’d close his eyes for a moment.

Dr. Leo repeated his question.