Upsetting the Balance

Moishe ran onto the pitch, too. The boy he swept up into the air was too small to have been a player. The boy squeaked in surprise. Then he shouted, “Papa!” The word was English, not Yiddish or Polish, but Moishe didn’t care. Reuven stared at him and said, “What happened to your beard, Papa?”

“The gas mask won’t fit over it tight enough, so I shaved it off,” Russie answered. Naked cheeks, however strange they felt, were better than a lungful of mustard gas. He’d seen that. Heart pounding in his chest, he asked the next question: “Where is your mother?”

“In the flat,” Reuven said indifferently, as if to ask,Where would she be? “Could you put me down, please? They’re starting to play again, and I want to watch.”

“I’m sorry,” Moishe said, his voice full of mock humility. However important his homecoming was to him, his son seemed well able to take it in stride. Moishe got out of the street just in time to evade a football flying past his ear. Reuven squirmed and again demanded to be released. Moishe set him on the scarred sidewalk and climbed the stairs to his flat as fast as he could.

From behind the door across the hall came the sounds of a hideous row: Mr. and Mrs. Stephanopoulos were going at it hammer and tongs. Russie couldn’t understand a word of the Greek they were using to slang each other, but it made him feel at home anyway. The Stephanopouloi cared about each other, cared enough to yell. Englishmen and — women seemed much more given to cold, deadly silences.

He tried the knob to the door of his own flat. It turned in his hand. He opened the door. Rivka was bustling across the front room toward the kitchen. Her gray eyes widened in astonishment; maybe the racket the Stephanopouloi were making had kept her from hearing him in the hall. Maybe, too, she needed a moment to recognize him, clean-shaven as he was and in the khaki battledress of a British soldier.

Astonishment of one sort turned to astonishment of another. “Moishe!” she whispered, still sounding disbelieving, and ran to him. They held each other. She squeezed him so tight, he could hardly breathe. Against his shoulder, she said, “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

“I can’t believeyou’re here, you and Reuven,” he answered. “I’ve prayed you would be, but we know what prayers are worth these days. And with everything the Lizards have done to London…” He shook his head. “In this war, civilians behind the line are liable to catch it worse than soldiers at the front. We’ve seen that ever since the Nazis started bombing Warsaw. I was so afraid for you.”

“We’re all right.” Rivka’s hands flew to her hair in an automatic, altogether unconscious effort to spruce up. “The kitchen is full of soot because I’ve had to cook with wood since the gas went out, but that’s all. I was goingmeshuggeh worrying over you, there without even a gun in the middle of all the bullets and bombs and the terrible gas. The bombs here-” She shrugged. “It was terrible, yes, but nothing we haven’t known before. If they don’t land right on top of you, you’re all right. And if they do, you probably won’t know about it anyhow. That’s not so bad.”

“No,” Moishe agreed. After almost three years of slow starvation and disease in the Warsaw ghetto, such fatalism came easy. Next to them, sudden, probably painless death could look downright attractive.

Rivka said, “There’s still some-veal left from last night, if you’re hungry.”

The slight hesitation told Moishe the “veal” was probably pork, and that his wife was trying to shield him from knowingly eating forbidden food. He’d done the same for her in Warsaw. Accepting the pretense at face value, he said, “I can always eat. Field rations are thin.”

Civilian rations were even thinner, and he knew it. He left a good deal on the plate. Rivka hadn’t expected him to show up. She and Reuven would need to make a meal, or more than one, out of what she’d fixed. When he said he couldn’t possibly hold another bite, she looked knowingly at him, but did not protest as she would have before the war.

She dipped water out of a bucket to accompany the meal. It was lukewarm, and had the flat, airless taste that said it had been boiled. He smiled. “I’m glad you’re being careful with what you drink.”

“I’ve seen what happens when people aren’t careful,” she answered seriously. “Being married to a medical student taught me that much, anyhow.”

“I’m glad,” he said again. He carried plate and fork over to the sink. It was full of soapy water: even now, it made a good washbasin. He washed his dishes and set them by the sink. Rivka watched him, somewhere between amusement and bemusement. Defensively, he said, “Being apart from you, I’ve learned to do these things, you see.”

“Yes, I do see,” she said. From her tone, he couldn’t tell whether she approved or was scandalized. She went on, “What else have you learned, being apart from me?”